March 2002-March 2020: Sobriety, depression and laughter.

March 8 2002-March 8-2022.

                When the sunshine brings itself into the house, dust floats both up and down, circling the room as if air were water and each particle was a miniature fish swimming through the living room, the dining room and everywhere—it is teeming with dust. There is little anything to do about it, the old apartment had a furnace at least forty years old, parts of it incased in asbestos and one reason the rent is so cheap is because of the effort it would take replace it. We all die every moment, some die  just faster than others. Have at it asbestos spewing machine. The flowers add color to the shelves and stacks of books, the walnut furniture and, of course, the giant wall of records and compact discs that line the walls of the dining room. They demand attention, and why not-they most likely have saved my life on many occasions. Lifting my mood or matching it, tiny grooves brought to life by a needle and electricity. I have heard that the majority of dust is human skin, my house would seem to have the skin of every inhabitant that has ever walked the scuffed wooden floors the past hundred years, long after people die parts of then literally continue to swim around us.

                There are days that tug at me from the inside, pulling around the ankles of whatever it is that rests and propels me forward. A soul? A conscious? A sub-conscious? A river of tiny electrical outlets connected by cells and nerves inside my body? A tug this severe can  be an ache, and over the years, it started around the age of nineteen, hit several peaks when I was twenty-one, thirty-three and fifty—these peaks towered above me, but they were the edge of annihilation, like wind slicing through the branches—the ache can be violent or soft, almost undetectable except for the small wisps of the leaves. It is those moments I crave, when it is silent, more of a whisper than an insurrection in my mind—repeating itself like a 100-person choir coming to the chorus now.  I have resisted joining the choir for most of my life, and at other periods the metaphorical church doors were closed and my hope was that it was demolished, wiping out the sounds. The Depression (it deserves a capital D) was planted in me before I was born, like cicadas  already burrowed deep in the ground before my parents even met, it has existed in our family genes much longer than I can even guess—and for some in our family it has sprouted inside of us as if it were a doomsday vine, roots growing inside, and as we have aged so has the vine, its arms reaching deep into our psyche and some of our experiences sprout new buds. At various times in my life, I have been able to prune it, through love, through mediation, music, writing, running and through the past two years walking several miles every day. But the roots are there, entangled at my core, one person I know compared it to a giant pool of black water that feels I am drowning in.

                The asphalt basketball court at East Elementary was baking from the spring time heat, balls were bouncing in an out of the baskets, in the far corner of the court, a small courtyard held a particularly vicious game of dodge-ball, the thick plastic red ball with its red bumpy exterior, zinging unlucky victims—red welts a testament to their lack of mobility, being slow on an elementary school playground can be a deadly trait. The hill at the other end of the court dipped down into the swings, the monkey bars and a giant half buried tractor-trailer tire that smelled of urine and the fidgety moments of first kisses traded after lunch. I had been a quiet child, moving every year had taught me to be silent, wary of friendships and I was always the smallest kid in my class—shy—I tended to stay to myself, keeping myself fortified with Marvel comic books and my early interest in the records I started collecting in third grade. The baseball field was dotted with fourth and fifth grade boys, swinging wooden bats—trying to impress girls and the other boys by knocking a leather ball out of the infield. I stayed back, if it were football season, I would have partaken in the boys’ games but, being small, uncoordinated with limited hand-eye coordination left me quite happily on the sidelines. There, on the side of the black sheet of play I found a voice that I would come to rely on for most days of my life. Several teachers, including Ms. Houska who would vacillate between calm and empathetic to being witchy and loud was there along with one of the student teachers, a blonde woman whose name is long gone and may well be a granny at this point, and of course, there were the other kids who didn’t play dodgeball, basketball, baseball or want to hang on monkey bars and had outgrown the metal swings the past few years. These were, for the most part- girls. In this moment, I developed an instant character, a sort of hippie who spoke in a high-pitched voice and while I didn’t really know what marijuana was, I pretended I was high-my voice a high-pitched sing-song voice—they all cackled. The student teacher doubled over in laughter, and as we sauntered back into class, I felt charged, a bit tired but excited. Several of the girls, one of whom I had a fourth-grade crush on remarked how funny I was, and I felt her eyes on me. From that day forward, I used humor to help placate the sense of isolation, an outsider in my own world that would later take the already seeds of depression into those blossoming vines that would later wrap and choke my life.

                The clatter of the plates, knives, forks, a vase full of flowers surprised my first wife—“what the fuck is wrong with you?!” she screamed, our entire relationship was one long scream, her screaming, my screaming back at her, the broken bits of our house and squealing of tires. “You are fucking with me! Get off my fucking back!” I yelled back, shards of glass and ceramic on the floor— “Watch your step! You broke my plates! What the fuck?” tears streaming down her face, hands against the table-holding herself up. “Our plates, they are our plates!” I yelled back at her as I scrambled for keys and slammed the door shut. Soon, she would move out, the failed experiment of our short lived (more like deathbed) marriage abandoned in that small two-bedroom house on East Patterson Street. “You ruined my life” she said as her friends from work hauled out furniture, she got the keys to my small white Metro, and I was relieved that it was all I lost, the failure of the relationship sat on a throne in the back of my skull.

                The months that followed were a period of shrill fear that I skidded through, nights at various bars, my bedroom floor littered with clothes and records, there were bottles of beer on every piece of furniture in my room, cigarette butts that had burned the corner of my dresser, the table next to my bed—somehow I was never alone—the feeling of being alone brought a desperation that motivated me out of my house. I was a wanderer in a five-block radius. I soon fell in love, and that relationship lasted over twenty years—with chaos, another dip into the deep black water that almost drank me up—a night in a motel contemplating the metal of a gun in my mouth that turned into sobriety that I still live today. There were trips all over country, to Europe which felt like a home I never really had, a house and of course, two children. That marriage ended in 2018, a period where the blackness came oozing to the top and although I was sober, I felt bereft of myself. At times, I would wake up in my bed, my small dog snuggled next to me turn my head and weep into my pillow—I forced myself to work, to exercise and to show up. She and I talk frequently, we have too—the children we created are the center of our lives, and when we part—sometimes we hug and the love the built the children is there, different of course-but there—and it stretches outward into the kids lives, dreams morph, like clouds and I am ok with this. When I see my children, I see all the love I ever feel walking, talking, making me laugh and of course, causing me worry.

                Depression is something that is like a fog, but a fog filled with monsters, it pours outward like a gushing waterfall that heads for the ocean. At times it has felt like there is a snake trying to get out of my throat, but it slithers inside of me, choking me and it finally decides to stay, coiling inside of my guts waiting to spring out when the opportunity arises. Suicide is something that some people live with on an everyday basis, a taste that will not leave– like the bitterness of a lemon, but it never leaves. Add some sugar it makes it easier, but it only dilutes the acid. I get jealous of the branches on the trees that I stare outside my window, I imagine their bravery as the wind whips and rattles them year after year, and when the sun is out they drink it is as if they had never tasted shine before. Their roots hold them solidly, growing up into the sky and deep into the earth and then I walk in the woods and I notice the ones the collapsed under the weight of living too long, the wind catching it just right or a crack of lightening choosing to crawl up its spine and it lays on the soft floor of the forest, for the rest of the trees to see, it’s carcass now a home to insects, moss and critters. Of course they are just trees, with no mind to think of these thoughts that I transfer onto them. They have no eyes to see but they do feel in some ways, their roots communicating in what is called mycorrhizal networks, a language of survival they chatter to one another through fibers intertwining with one another, finding nutrients, water and the ability to let other roots where stones may be a barrier. The complexities of this provides hope, an opportunity to feel small for it is when I am small that I can experience the world, when feeling too full a person can’t learn any more. There is no room.

                A friendly nod, followed by a cold bottle of beer being pushed my way, the cool condensation streaming down its sides was a comfort. An easy way to feel differently, to slip into something else from what I wanted, and predictable. For certain I knew what would happen when I tilted the bottle to my mouth, first the small smell of the alcohol seeping into my nose and quickly followed by the beer. I always took a long drink, letting the beer go directly to the back of my throat, my ability to drink almost half of the beer in one long drag off the bottle was a practice, my mouth craved the cold bath of five p.m. I learned without ever thinking of it. Most of my regular bartenders usually had another one set up by time I could even position myself on the bar stool. Putting the bottle down in front of me, the taste still in my mouth, fermented with a touch of sting, I could already feel the change in my body—it was as if my brain was telling my body to have a head start, the buzz started almost immediately. Twenty years later and I can still taste the beer on my lips, the scent still buried in my mind. Sometimes it feels like I was drinking yesterday. The club was always open in my mind, living near a college campus in the middle of a large city provided shortcuts that gave myself permission to duck away, to squeeze a few minutes of change that was needed, or so I thought at any given moment but usually I only allowed this to happen in the late afternoon. In my perception, I was a disciplined drinker. Eventually if I didn’t treat it, I grew grumpy, agitated and morose—these were the danger zones, an internal DMZ that could prove dangerous for my partner and myself. Drinking was a slow courting, eventually we were married, the bottle(s) and I, although for me it was a private matter that I tended to announce publicly. The Anyway Records tee-shirts during this time had an unofficial slogan on the back, “Buy Me a Beer” which was our joyous secret handshake to one another and for those who didn’t get it, well that was the point.  But like all relationships, they must change, or they become dry, brittle and bitter by the time I was in my early thirties, with a gathering pile of dead friends and brokenness gathering around my path and with my own love story headed towards an oily ditch I had to make a choice.

                At the edge of the slim hospital bed at the Shands detox center in Gainesville Florida, I grappled with the fact that it might be time to break-up with alcohol, which was terrifying as most break-ups are, and I was a person who avoided confrontation, plus I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Who would take my place of the various barstools in Columbus, Athens and to a lesser extent, Gainesville? What would those bartenders do when they pushed a Black Label towards and empty seat, I was creating ghosts. There were the conversations I was having with myself, in retrospect it was both silly and tragic, this is where my behavior had taken me—constructing make-believe scenarios around liquid. But it was scary and coupled with depression and the burgeoning sense that a big part of my identity (I had tee-shirts made for Christ’s sake!), was being discarded, I was not only petrified but also on very shaky ground. Although later that night in the large cafeteria a sea of alcoholics, sitting on hard plastic chairs, sipping coffee from small Styrofoam cups, mixed with powder cream and packets of sugar that always seemed to spill half of their contents on the fake wooden fold up tables, I was offered and accepted hope. Although these small saplings of optimism were like virga, precipitation that evaporates before it hits the ground. So, the trick was to make sure that I had to feed the clouds so to speak, every day before the entire clouds of promise vanished. My years of going to bars, nightclubs and pubs had oddly equipped me with some of the behaviors I would use to stay sober, mostly that while a depressed introverted sort, I really liked being with other people, albeit at a distance, sometimes that unspoken space was a bottle of beer or two inches of Maker’s Mark. I used this learned behavior, the one that allowed me to feel invisible to do something different, to show up—to become a vessel that could water the cloud. Even though I very seldom trusted myself, my inability to fully understand my motivations was naked, raw and I borrowed other peoples, or should I say I copied it. After a year or so of sobriety, I investigated Buddhist practices, mostly meditation but did a great deal of reading and journaling—-and they worked, for many years afterwards, the depression left, evaporated into nothing. There would be moments of lucidity where I noticed the emptiness of where the depression had been like noticing a scar that has dissolved over time, and the relief I felt was an akin to a giant metaphysical sigh.

                The rate of suicide attempts for children of parents who have completed suicide is 400% higher than those whose parents don’t complete suicide, and for people who experience a suicide in their lives, with friends and other family members there is a spike and it isn’t uncommon to see small mushroom clouds of despair that surround a completed suicide, the waves reach out and tap everybody within its orbit and then they too ripple around. If the person is a public figure the ripples continue far into the future, and for most these people it is the first remembrance of that person’s life, more so than even their greatest achievements whether it be music, acting or politics. The act provides a quiet permission that taking one’s own life is an option, it operates like a virus—thus the shame people feel when it is an ever-running option in their minds, as well as the shame for the people surrounding them. There is judgement, self and by others that presents itself as a solid stone mountain for dealing with those thoughts and especially the emotions that they come dressed in. Welcome to the Ball. For many substance users, for people that experience trauma and abandonment at an early age—we feel the actual physical environment differently than others, and this stems from an early age—we seek comfort from even the rooms we walk through and for me the primary one has been music, and it is the safest one. Even to this day, there is nothing more than I enjoy than driving my car listening to music and at times I want to sit in my partners drive way and hold her hand while I listen to Neil Young, Waxahatchee or any piece of music that comforts and inspires me, meanwhile she wants to get in the house, feed the kids, let the dog out, do things and I just want that little hand in mine and to listen. Or when I go to the gym, sit on the elliptical dance/running five or six miles to a soundtrack that I have created. I couldn’t not imagine living in the world pre-Walkman or phonographs. All those poor motherfuckers who lived before the mid-twentieth century, having to wait for wandering minstrels, or being able to afford orchestras—Jesus Christ how they must have suffered not knowing about the future of being able to listen to something whenever you wanted. But of course, it wasn’t just music I fell into to relieve my internal pain, it was alcohol, sex, the internet, buying things—even food—but all of them brought a different heat and different number of consequences, mostly feeding the black pool that has resided inside of me.

                “Hurry up Bela, Jesus you are so slow,” Jenny was yapping at me while I looked for my car keys, summer was coming to a fast close, we were driving from Columbus to her hometown of South Vienna, I didn’t want to go—really had no intention of returning to anything that was near my high school. In my mind I had left the trappings of that building behind when I walked out the door just a few months earlier, and besides Jenny’s family and me soon to be divorced stepfather there was very little I wanted to see in that area save for a few friends. “I have your keys Nerdla!” she was already outside, yelling from the sidewalk—“C’mon!” While the fall brought the end of summer it also welcomed school, new friendships, football, and a change of clothing. She wore a short summer dress and sunglasses, her hair was still long—almost big but more scattered than most of the hairstyles that were so common in the mid to late eighties, mine was long and curly, I had not cut it for nearly seven months—since my senior pictures which was also the last time I have ever combed it. We drove the 40 minutes, listening to R.E.M. on the wheezing tape deck in my car, the fields of soy and corn waved and danced at us as we passed a forty-ounce Milwaukee’s Best between us, “should we stop and get another one?” she asked as she drank the last swig near London, Ohio. We sill had fifteen miles to go. “We can get some at Shoemaker’s” I said, referring to the now long closed supermarket in South Vienna. Jenny’s older sister worked there as her husband’s family owned it, years later after the giant Wal-Mart opened up six miles down the road the store came to a slow, sad and shuttering halt as if it were a slow-motion tumbleweed turning over in the wind. It was the annual South Vienna Corn Festival, something I had never attended while I was in high school, and while most of the other kids in school flocked to both the Corn Festival and the Clark County Fair, these were events that were a bit much too busy for me, if there is anything that makes an outsider feel more outside its an event that is filled with people. The more people there were, doing things I had no interest in the more I wanted to flee—-I’d rather be somewhere, anywhere else. But I was 18, in-love and so we went. Moving to rural Ohio from Athens, Ohio—yes, a small town but also a college town was difficult and in hindsight, almost traumatic for me—going from being able to walk everywhere, hang out in record stores, be privy to college students blaring music on their lawns while suntanning, drinking and laughing instilled the idea of a wider bigger and exciting world. I left Athens at the age of 14, in the early 80’s—and by that time I had discovered R rated movies—I had seen An American Werewolf in London, Apocalypse Now, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, heard Bob Marley, The Clash, The Ramones and Devo. Suddenly I was transplanted into cornfields, and I felt like a scarecrow.  At the Corn Festival I ran into my friend Chris Biester who was home for the long weekend from Ohio University, he had his guitar and played a few songs on the sidewalk—most notably “Sugar Mountain” which he explained was meaningful for him as he just turned twenty. At the time, on that hot September day—for those five minutes everything was alright, Chris’s voice and guitar held the air around me and while some of the passerby’s were no doubt looking askance at him, I never noticed. Twenty seemed far away from me even though I was 18, I would soon be stepping out of adolescence and Chris was already in adulthood. It was exciting, nerve wracking. I drank more beer.  

                The trips back to Western Ohio got less and less, in a few years Jenny and I had broken up—-she would return often as she struggled with homelessness and her mental health she would come back and stay with her mother—these were always short lived, maybe a week or two at best. One time, when she returned from an ill-fate trip to Miami where she had convinced an old bar-fly friend to fly her down to escape the streets of Columbus, a trip the ended with her being forced into Jackson County Memorial Hospital after being found wandering around delusional and drunk, I picked her up at the Columbus airport. “Well. I don’t think I can go back to Miami—there is nothing there for me. Not sure what I’ll do but I can stay with mom for a while.” Shortly though, she was back in Columbus—ducking in and out of Bernie’s and North Campus bars and taking up refuge in the ravines of Clintonville. “I can’t stay in South Vienna” she said one day as we walked towards the Tim Horton’s that sat between my house and her tent, “I’d rather be on the street than feel cooped up there.” “Maybe just staying with your mom would be good for you? You can quit drinking and there are less temptations?” “What if I don’t want to quit? Besides, there is nothing to do, just Mom’s boyfriend and the dog—what am I gonna do, work at Shoemaker’s?” Oddly, I saw her point. She had travelled all over the world, been to Europe countless times, lived in Spain for a few months, not as a student but she had run out of money and a kind Spanish woman welcomed her in until she finally got wrung out by Jenny being Jenny and bought her a ticket home. This was in the early nineties, another adventure Jenny had that peeled under the wheels of her life. Jenny had lived a million lives by the time she arrived at her mothers in 2005, broken and bent—she knew she was becoming a shell of her former self, the bits and cracks of her were dropping off of her everywhere, every night she went. “I love mom, but I’d rather take my chances in Columbus.”

                There were times when we would talk, especially when she was really suffering—her skin bruised from the kind of living she did, she fell a lot—especially the last ten years of her life, not just from the alcohol but she was slowly using the use of her legs, she body thin from anemia and the inability of her to keep food in her body, it would erupt out of her when she tried to eat—it seemed she lived on vodka and Gatorade for most of her forties, “I can’t eat Bela, it doesn’t matter because I’m never very hungry.” Her hair was thinning, falling out in handfuls at times, the only part of her that seemed to be unchanged were her blue eyes, that still glowed while everything around them went dark, her body a leisurely collapse into nothingness, hers  was like an abandoned village near Chernobyl, with only the trees still growing. She would look at me, disparage my depression as if I had some control over it, “I can’t understand why you want to die sometimes Bela, I just want to live soo much—-I wish I could still do the things I used  to do.”  She wore herself out trying to live, later—when she was near death, she told me just a few weeks before she died, the final almost continuous run of hospitalization was like a grotesque version of a baseball player’s hitting streak, “I can’t do this anymore, I just hurt so much. I don’t have it in me .” I could say nothing, just nod in silent agreement, she was battered—the thinness of her living had become too parched, the booze she had tried to quinch it with had only withered her insides.

                Other times I would feel guilty when she said these things to me, as if I was robbing from her by being depressed, that one’s enthusiasm for living could be traded like a commodity. Later, I realized that moods are something I must learn to manage, that every day I drew away from my last drink was not always going to be better—I would have to encounter and persist through some dark times—but I knew if I had a drink it would allow the possibility of my inner doomsday machine to be activated. So, I haven’t. And I fill my days with laughter, regardless of how I might be feeling inside, I am always laughing, even alone—in the shower, on my walks, everywhere—I think if you know me, you know this much about me. I remarked to my partner recently that some people are like cut flowers, they sacrifice themselves to bring their beauty to others, cut at the stem, placed on a mantle, a coffee table, by the window for people to see-to smile, a courageous act. “There’s nothing courageous about it, they don’t have a choice to be cut—somebody just cuts them and sticks them in a vase.” Considering this, I thought about it, and just realized there is an acceptance then, it’s not aways a choice but there is beauty in existing and even in the slow melt of being in a vase, cut at the stem, brightly shining petals until they fall off. On March 8^th, I will celebrate 20 years since my last drink.

Uncle Peter (Pedro Koe-Krompecher) 1945-2021

When I lived on Chittenden and, later Summit Street, near The Ohio State University campus with Jenny Mae—our life filled with the sort of invisible desperation of poor college students who don’t realize that they are poor except we weren’t college students we were just poor and happened to live near campus. I was working two or three jobs, at least two record store jobs and an overnight shift at UDF where I mostly made fun of the drunken fraternity and sorority students who drunkenly and stupidly bought ice cream cones and tried in vain to buy alcohol after two a.m. Jenny worked as a bartender at several bars but spent most of her afternoons watching soap operas and then the Golden Girls, smoking pot and starting to drink Milwaukee’s Best around 5 pm until I got home or until she had to go to work to continue her pursuit of the perfect buzz. It was during these twilight hours that Uncle Peter would show up, me fresh out of my record store shift, opening my first beer—trying to catch up with Jenny who was usually so stoned at this point she was laughing to herself or maybe she was just responding to the voices in her head. Peter would bang on the door, dressed in tan, he looked like a foreign Jack Hanna but instead of being surrounded by animals he would do the inverse, surround everybody else with his booming voice and laughter. “Hey Be! I was in the neighborhood and wanted to check in on you guys.” Sometimes he would be carrying a bag of McDonalds filled with cheeseburgers “they are only $0.50 a piece for two bucks I’m mostly full and they taste good” or a carton of Church’s Fried Chicken, again proclaiming what a bargain they were, “you can get ten thighs for $5 and I can eat this shit all day long” he would offer the opened cardboard box in your direction, the sweet scent of fried chicken filing the room with it’s pungent scent, greasy fingers a testament to how good the fried legs of these birds were. “No thanks,” I would say but Jenny always dove in, “Thanks’ Peter I’m starving” her hours of weed making her hungry. If Peter didn’t have food he would ask me to make him some and while I cooked he undoubtedly would be smoking weed with Jenny in the other room although he knew I never smoked so he did it always out of eyeshot from me. He would then come into the kitchen, “Smells good Be’, I can’t wait because now I have the munchies.” Sometimes he would offer me some part time work helping him with some of the rental properties he owned, knowing we needed the money and at other times when he was leaving he would slip me a $20 bill again, knowing I was starved for cash. This was something he had started doing when my brother and I were in high school, stepping into the wide space our father had left when he chose to step out of our lives. Uncle Peter’s feet and love were larger than what felt like the crater my father had left behind in his abandonment.

He would take us to his house in Upper Arlington making up chores for us to do, one weekend I moved a giant pile of bug ridden boards from one side of his lawn to another and then back again, like an anxious teenage Sisyphus who was so completely creeped out by bugs and worms I would carry heavy two-by-fours by two fingers lest anything crawl up my arm or slither over my fingers leaving moist worm sludge all over my hands. “Come on Bela! It’s only worms, they don’t hurt anything” and he would fling them across the lawn and then reach into a bag of chips, ruining both the potato chips and my appetite. Years later I would ask him about this exercise in moving wood around the yard like I was moving furniture around a living room, “I didn’t need it moved but I wanted you to learn to work and be able to disgusting work—I had to justify a reason to pay you $50.” One job he had me help him on was cleaning out an apartment where he had to evict someone, this was at the height of the crack epidemic and the house was tiny in the Linden area of Columbus and as we carried garbage out from the house we would get stares from some of the young men who had walked up to the edge of lawn which worried me until Peter stopped and chatted a few up and soon they were all laughing. He knew some of their parents, he was able to make friends with anybody even gang members. He went back inside the house and  called me into the bathroom which gave off the rank smell of defecation and moldy carpet. He was going to go pick up a new toilet and be back in an hour and had instructed me to clean out the bathroom so he could install the new one when he got back. “I’m not going in there” I said, “Are you fucking crazy!?” I stood in the living room holding my nose. He asked me what was wrong and I pointed to the toilet that was overflowing with human excrement and garbage, beer cans and fast food packaging. “What?” he asked to me as he stared at it. Didn’t he see what I saw? “Dude, it if filled with shit, what the fuck?” I felt nauseous. “Well, they didn’t pay the water bill but they still had to shit so where else were they supposed to go?”, and with that he grabbed a metal trashcan that had been sitting in the middle of the living room, cockroaches scurrying about and put it next to the toilet, he then proceeded to reach his hand in and shovel the waste into the trashcan, “Be’, it’s only shit—it won’t hurt anyone.” After he deposited a few handfuls of the shit into the trashcan, he said shaking his head in feigned pity, “I have some gloves for you to make it easier.” Because there was no running water, he took a bottle of Windex and sprayed his hands and wiped them off with a paper towel that he deposited into the trashcan. He came back about four hours later, the street alive with cars, music and police sirens.  I had managed to clean up most of the apartment and sat on the porch soaking in all the action of the street.          

                Peter would speak as an authority on all things, mostly to just argue for not even argument’s sake but to just be contrarian—a loving thorn in your side because he enjoyed ruffling feathers. Never one to let facts get in his way, he would just pull them out of thin air and once you were trapped in an argument with him, one that he created and soon you would realize he just said whatever to fit his narrative which was whatever the opposite of yours. And when he spoke, he would layer his speech with long pauses for effect that he thought would lend credence to whatever point he was trying to make, and the only result was to give the listener more time to think how full of shit he was. I would not say Uncle Peter would lie–he would just imagine things, mostly that were not true…

                There are a few wonderful memories of have of my Uncle that show the depth of his love and commitment to his family, most especially his sons Pablo and Pedro and his ever-patient wife, Milagros. When I was younger and would be at the house in Upper Arlington he would leave the door open and I would venture in calling his name. At times there would be no reply and I would search around the house and usually find him curled up on one of the boys’ beds, his large body surrounding his children as they all napped. Usually I would raid the fridge (which usually had very little food) and wait out his nap. Another time I picked up my grandmother, whose girth was only outsized by her personality, and we went to meet Peter at Ponderosa where she would use a coupon for a Buy-One-Get-One Free dinner, she would always make me buy the cheapest one—never giving me a choice as she was buying. “Beellaaa, you get the chopped steak it is delicious and I get mine to go—we go to the salad bar.” I hated the salad bar, as we would usually spend over an hour at the all you can eat buffet which I found fairly disgusting. On one of these occasions Peter met us there and just ordered the salad bar for himself, he got there after us and as he eyed the gray chopped steak on my plate he asked if I was going to eat it. “No, it’s gray.” Peter took my plate, “just put some ketchup on it and it’s not gray anymore and it’s delicious.” He quickly devoured it. My grandmother had filled her plate with salad and off to the side she had filled a bowl with mayonnaise and shredded yellow cheese which she would eat from after several bites from her towering plate of salad. Peter stuck his fork in the bowl of mayonnaise and cheese and suddenly his mother stabbed him in the back of the hand with her fork. “Jesus Mommy!” to which my grandmother replied “Dat is my mayoonaize, geet yourself your own.” I was both horrified as well and bewildered by all of this. “Be’ go get me some mayonnaise and cheese please” he asked as I trudged off to fetch him a bowl full of condiments.

                A few years ago, Peter was visiting Columbus and was helping my ex-wife (whom he always asked about and loved dearly) with her house and he stayed in my small apartment that was just a few blocks from her house.

He asked me one day, “Be’ where is your tv?”

 I looked over from my cup of coffee, “I don’t have one. I don’t watch TV.”

“Don’t have a TV! What, how do you get the new?!” he was baffled.

I explained I read the news on-line, “I subscribe to the Times and Washington Post. I don’t like television news. And when people are visiting I want them to talk and not have the television interfering.”

Later that afternoon I came home and heard a tv blaring upstairs, he had bought a tv.

“I got you a tv, you need one for the news—to know what is going on in the world. I’ll hang it downstairs above your mantle for you.”

“Thank you, Peter, the kids will love the tv and I’ll watch it. But keep it in your room for now and when you are done I’ll put it in my room.”

He still wanted to put it in the living room but after some discussion he allowed me to keep the television upstairs. He was complicated yet simple and I never heard him complain about anything in his life as he would usually say when I asked about his health, “I’m great Be’, I always am because complaining gets me nothing. I love my kids and Milagros. I am the luckiest man alive and when I meet St. Peter I’ll tell him the same thing. I had the best life anyone could want.” I will miss him deeply. Thank you Peter for everything you did for me.

Springs, New York 1974-2021

“I think we turn here……or maybe it was back there, one of those other roads” I said scanning the woods surrounding the car, the map on the phone was an excellent guide in trying to get to where we wanted to go but, in my mind, I had no idea where this was, so we drove one way, turned, and drove in another direction. None of the houses looked familiar, they were larger, set back into the pine trees and wealthier than what stood on this point of Long Island over 45 years ago. Springs-Fireplace Road winds from one end of East Hampton to the other, looping through all of Springs, New York like an unraveled garden hose. My memory of living there is formed in clumps, nothing linear just emotional pockmarks nestled deep in my amygdala, they are all lovely and safe, so it makes sense that I wanted to go back here, to find the place where everything was perfect for a year or at least felt that way. We drove from Ohio on my own mission that my partner was able to indulge me in, with care, love and most importantly understanding how I have needed to do this. We listened to a very long playlist I have been adding to for the past year, comic/crime podcasts and laughed as we went across northern Pennsylvania in one “straight-shot” (moves arms back and forth quickly as if performing a jujitsu move.) I had been planning of returning to this brief childhood home since I became an adult and started travelling to New York City in the early nineties although almost all the trips involved seeing music or on those earliest trips a girlfriend, there was not any time to explore the haunting of my childhood, the globs of childhood that spoke from deep within my mind were easily wiped away by concrete, amplifiers, and sights of the city. Besides, I was usually too drunk or too hungover to want to drive 100 miles for something that may not exist any longer.

                Leading up to the trip I began experiencing vivid dreams, most involved the ocean and some that were filled with the anxiety of travelling, of waiting to arrive but not yet being where you are headed. I had also received a message from my estranged father who turned eighty this past spring, and in a moment of clarity I realized that I did not want our final correspondence to be one of anger, which it had been—our last correspondence one of sharp words that left no doubt where I stood on our relationship—me, as the protective father he never was. And, so I sent him an email in some ways trying to offer something akin to a truce—and allowing him the opportunity to meet his grandchildren who are now teenagers. There was no answer to my email until a few days before my fifty-third birthday and about two weeks before the trip to New York. There was nothing different in his tone or his thoughts, it was the same as it has been for the past forty years and while I realize as a middle-aged man, he can no longer hurt his son, it stung like a small soul pinch (a soul titty-twister) and then I moved on. (Sigh), I tried. It was this event that loomed over this journey backwards forty-five years as we are straight shotted across Interstate 80 while Everything but The Girl and Lou Reed bounced around my white Volkswagen sedan.

                My mother and my former stepfather David had moved us from Youngstown to Springs in late 1974 or early 1975 where he got a job as a marine biologist working near Montauk, for David it must have felt as if he was going home. He grew up in Brooklyn, went to Syracuse on a football scholarship, joined the military, ended up moving to Germany for his PhD and ended up meeting my mother in Athens, Ohio as her marriage was falling apart. He took a job in steel mill in Youngstown in 1973, maybe doing mindless blue-collar work would help him make sense of his life and after a year he moved us to Long Island. The time we spent there has made an indelible print on my life as the soft ease of living in the woods, near water that was so large to me at the time it appeared that the sea could swallow the sky in several gulps and without the arguing of my parents during the first five years of my life—for me, the memory of Springs has been one of calm and discovery—like watching a nature show narrated by David Attenborough, while there was some danger in the bush everything would be alright and, in fact, everything held beauty. There were deep walks in the woods behind our house, where we would find box turtles, and with the ocean only minutes away we would walk after a heavy rain and stare at the crashing waves, the violence of the water holding my gaze because there was nothing else to do. When one sees such authoritative beauty one can only watch. I fell in love with the ocean during that time in my life, it’s attraction still holds me today, when dreams of water—of traveling over it, and succumbing to it as a blanket covers a bed still arrive with regularity. Ohio has no sea, we do have Lake Erie—itself mimicking the ocean in it is midwestern manner—it too has a temper, as well as lighthouses, barges, and fishing, but it is miles from Columbus and when one knows something is an imitation, it will never hold the same power as the real thing. So, I continue to go back to the Atlantic Ocean of my childhood.

                “Let’s go to New York City” I mentioned to her one night, we were trying to plan our summer, both of us having a busy July and August planned, while trying to juggle children  and all after a global pandemic. Looking over dates we choose one and she asked me about Springs. I told her about my hopes of always wanting to return, to fold out the wrinkling brittle map of my childhood and see if I could connect the emotional dots by seeing the proof of when I felt a certain type of joy and calm. “Let’s go!” she said, kissing my forehead. “But it’s a far drive from the city—it is literally on the longest end of Long Island,” I explained, “probably a two- or three-hour drive.” “I always like driving with you” was her answer followed by another kiss. For my birthday she procured a motel room on the beach and off we went. Love is indulging in the other’s dreams. So we drove and drove and after a day in the city drove again out to  Springs, battling traffic and the male Australian voice from the Google Maps app on my iPhone  seemed to grow annoyed by my ignoring his advice. At one point I was expecting him to just say, “well fuck it then, find your own way mate.” We found Springs, and the ocean for which we tried to swim in—I was braver and stayed in longer, making several efforts before the cold water pushed me away so we collected shells, watched the clouds, and in one beautiful instance watched two deer climb upon the sand dunes to our left, their bodies holding our gaze until they slipped away into the darkness.

                That evening as we searched for a house that no longer exists, I phoned my mother asking her if she remembered the address of the house, “I don’t know Bela, let me think….if you go down Springs-Fireplace road and see the Pollack-Krasner House the road we lived on was right after that but I can’t remember the name—but the houses on our street were tiny they were probably destroyed for new builds. Our house didn’t even have insulation. Lee Krasner had another house that was next to ours, but she wasn’t there much—she was elderly if I remember correctly. I wish I could remember.” I can picture my mother looking up, trying to remember but drawing a blank.  I texted my brother and sister, but they could not remember, we were children, and it was so many years ago. We kept driving and soon realized that we may have driven by the place where the house had stood and in fact, the entire road may have been removed for the development of these newer houses. She touched my face as I drove, “are you ok honey?” I was and replied, “perhaps it’s best we didn’t’ find it, I don’t think it matters if we found it or not.” We went and got dinner at a seafood diner that had a list of famous people who had eaten there, and I fried seafood and had a chocolate egg cream.

                The next morning, we drove into Montauk where we ate pancakes that were not as world famous as the sign out front claimed there were, more like Mediocre Famous but the post-COVID interaction of the crowd inside meant for delicious eavesdropping and we played finger tag on the countertop and grinned at each other. We then journeyed to the  lighthouse that didn’t appear how I remembered it, nor did the drive to the end of the island but we paid the extra amount to walk around the lighthouse and gazed out over the rocky cliff into the boats below us, the swirling water and felt the sun against our faces. We held hands. “How do you feel?” she asked me midway on the drive back, “I feel good, it was worth it—thank you for indulging me.”

 David passed away about a year and a half ago and with his death some of the questions about Long Island and my time there are now lost, although my mother remembers some things, the long stretch of time since that period of our lives have grown so thin they have disappeared in places, invisible except for the emotions that come when I see the waves and smell the salt of the ocean, when I plunge my head into the waves I can taste my childhood, the salt sitting on my tongue from 45 years ago. It isn’t important if I saw the house or visited the library in East Hampton where we would watch black and white horror movies on spindly film reels, munching on bowls of popcorn, or even driving on the same road—the connection is there and although I would have liked to see it, to touch the places I once played there isn’t a need to do that. It is here, in my heart and I hold them inside of me. This summer my children will not be going to the Netherlands as they have for almost every summer of their lives, because of the pandemic they have another summer in Ohio—but this may be one filled with adolescent memories as they discover crushes and new experiences, they are pulling away from their parents and learning who they are. Everyday is something new for them, and while I want to pull them back—to have them laugh at my dad jokes from the backseat, this is their time to create new safe spaces of joy that will carry them through life.

Secrets

                As I made my way through the crowd of people, squirming, dipping my shoulders and ducking my head I went in one way into the crowd that hung over and around me like vines in a jungle and soon I appeared at the other end, like a rabbit running through a tunnel. I rose from the mass under a light but not in the shine of the sun but a beer light. I nodded towards the bartender who slid a bottle of beer towards me, raised on finger and pushed a shot of Jim Beam in my direction. He held up two fingers, for two dollars and I put a five on the bar another showed my palm to let him know to keep it, turned around towards the stage and quickly downed the shot. Grabbed the beer and made my way towards the restroom. As I stood at the urinal and drained the beer in two gulps while I peed, the beer fell deep in me and I felt good. Sparkling.  Soon I went back towards the front of the crowd, doing the same bent dance through all the sweaty bodies and sidled next to my girlfriend who eyed me suspiciously, “you were gone a while” she yelled in my ear, “did you get another drink?” She handed me the half empty bottle of Black Label she had been holding. I was not supposed to be drinking more than what I had agreed on before we arrived, two or three beers tops. I promised. “No, I didn’t get another drink” I felt like rolling my eyes. “O.K.” she answered, but her eyes said she did not believe me. I thought to myself, “no, I had two drinks.” In my mind I was not really lying, I was just omitting.

                “Please call me when you get home, from the show” she was calling from Gainesville and I was in the small bedroom apartment I was renting with my friend Kent in Columbus. I had arrived back in Columbus after fourteen months in Gainesville, with  just over a year of sobriety, and the apartment that Kent lived in was on the corner of 5^th Avenue and Hunter anarea that was quickly being gentrified but we were both in early sobriety—he was working at the residential treatment program he had completed the year before, I was back working at a record store—the apartment had not yet been upgraded to the rest of the neighborhood. It was dusty with musty carpets and a faucet that was always dripping. “I will, I’m coming right back to the apartment after the show.” The plan was to see the show, and head home. My routine was to get up early, hit the gym, then go to work, hit a 12-Step meeting at noon, back to work and then another 12-Step group and then home where I would read before bed. It was working for me, the temptation to drink was dissipating by degrees as was the years-long depression that hung around me like a stench. I had actually started attending a gay AA meeting that was just down the street from our apartment, because there were no women there, I would not be tempted to engage in the other secretive behavior I had been involved in besides sneaking drinks. “I’ll call you when I get home, it shouldn’t be late—maybe twelve or so.” She instructed me not to call if it was too late, “I have to teach in the morning, but if you get in before midnight go ahead and call.” We told each other our love for one another and hung up.

                The show ended fairly early, somewhere between eleven and twelve—people were milling about, the band was loading out-with the exception of the primary singer who was standing at the bar receiving congratulations and getting a beer. I had not been back in Columbus long, and friends I hadn’t seen in almost a year were coming up and chatting—at this point, I had realized that I was a bit uncomfortable and had not yet made the connection that one aspect of my drinking had to do with the underlying social anxiety I experienced for most of my life—this revelation took some years to discover. We laughed, told stories and a few offered to buy me drinks, one person brought me a beer that I politely declined and shared that I didn’t drink any longer-a brave step for me. “That’s a good one, here you go.” Smiling, “no, I really don’t drink anymore. I quit over a year ago.” The beer sat between us, he hesitated, “I guess I’ll have to drink both!” he backed away as if he walked in on someone using the rest room.  There was a woman who I was talking with, we had flirted over the years and as we laughed, she inched closer to me, our hands nearly touching as we stood in a small circle of friends. “What are you doing after this?” she grinned, her smile a little off, her words a slushy slur. She had perfect teeth. Suddenly it hit me, my intention to stay at that point had drifted past seeing the music, of enjoying what I had loved so much and slide into the part of me that yearned for female companionship. Realizing that I could have gone home with her, I stammered, “I need to go home. It’s so great to see you but I need to get up early.” “Are you sure?” her eyes beamed into me. “Yeah, I do need to leave. It’s late.” I said my goodbyes. Everybody except me was wasted. As I got ready for bed that night, opening a book that helped me with self-reflection and hopefully pour some wisdom into my brain I had the realization that I was more tempted by the companionship than by the alcohol.

                There is a vail that we carry, an inherited invisible garment that is constructed from generation to generation—some  by words and some  by actions that never appeared, only stuck in the shadows of familial relationships. I learned secrets early, some I did not fully know the meanings behind, when a parent closed their door and there was a stranger with them on the other side. A fist fight in the front yard between my father and my uncle, both men spilling the others blood in the snow while my father hustled my brother into his car in the middle of the Christmas party. “What happened dad?” we didn’t want to leave, the latin and disco music carrying over the heads and into our famished ears, this was an experience we looked forward to every year. “Your uncle Pablo is an asshole” my father’s voice was gruff and stabbed through the car which seemed colder than the freezing December chill outside. He held a handkerchief to his nose as the blood dripped around his mouth onto his lap. His glasses crooked on his face. “We want to stay” my brother was cross with him, “we have all our stuff in the bedroom.” “O.k., then stay but I’m not.” Hustling into the house, the party hadn’t let up. Everything was a shimmying normal. My father picked us up the next day, in a bustled hurry he grabbed our things and barked at us to get in the car.

                This past year my partner asked me if I thought my daughter read this blog, “I don’t think so.” She asked me why and I explained that I don’t think she interested in what her father has done, and besides she is fifteen—she is discovering her own interests. “If I could read about my parents when I was fifteen you better believe I would” she smiled at me. “Do you think your kids will read your writing, your poetry?” I asked. “Yes, at some point.” Recently I received copies of my first book, a large heavy box appeared on the front porch while I was in the middle of a meeting. Bruno opened it up and held a book up, “wow dad, it looks pretty cool.” He yelled upstairs, “Hey Saskia, dad’s book is here!” She came downstairs and opened one of the hardcover copies, “this looks neat dad” her hand pressing against the dust jacket. Dusk jacket. “Are you going to read it?” I went into the kitchen, pulling a can of Diet Coke from my decrepit fridge. “Yes, of course!” she had moved to the heat vent in the dining room, her body wrapped in a blanket, she was turning the pages. “I’m happy you dedicated it to us, my name is in a book!” “Of course, it is” I turned the record over, the needle from the turntable was hic-cupping in the run-out groove. “Bruno are you going to read my book?” He was headed outside, skateboard carrying him across the wooden floors. “Nope! I don’t read dad. Let me know where we are going tonight” and the door shut behind him. Later, after taking Bruno skating while I went to the gym we came back to the house. Saskia was still on the vent as I walked through to fetch some water. “Still reading?” I asked. She was staring straight ahead and it had looked like she had been crying. “Dad?” I set the water down, chose another record and put it on the record player. “Yeah?” my back turned to her. “This was a weird book to read.” I turned around; she had a slight smile. “Why is that?” “It’s really sad but also funny at times. Plus, it’s strange to read about your dad getting blowjobs” she laughed. “Well, there aren’t any real descriptions of blowjobs” I replied in a matter-of-fact voice, I didn’t want her to be frightened of sex or talking about it—I had enough sex shaming when I was a child that I did not want to pass this along to my kids, “but yes, there are some sad parts, Jenny lived a sad life—one of desperation but she was also funny as was Jerry. Plus, hopefully there is some redemption in there.” There was a pause from the vent, “I suppose, but I liked it. I don’t think I’ll tell my friends to read it.” There are a lot of secrets revealed in those pages, it is easier to write the secrets than to say them.

                 The dance of lies that we learn takes us through truth and out the other end, sometimes like a bullet and other times like a soft cloth, but it’s always a dance that gets more complicated with more steps every passing year. I am a magician at times holding out one truth that acts as an inverse mirror, so strong that I believe it myself—but on the other side the truth dims under the layers of avoidance I learned to bury and fold into myself. There is a saying in Buddhism that that present is a shadow of the past, the future is a shadow of the present, the cause and effect of my drinking taught me subtle ways to avoid the truth although I tried to live my life honestly—to follow up on my word, the complexities of learning to live honestly was difficult even if on to the outside world I was honest. I was raised to tell the truth, it was hammered into us as well as to be mindful of those who suffer, stick up for the little guy, be true to your convictions—give of yourself. These stuck with me and my siblings, as we grew up these are things we did, challenged bullies, befriended the kids who were picked up, don’t follow the pack—live truthfully in your heart. I’ve challenged authority most of my life, and in high school it got me tossed out of class (for instance, when I told the biology teacher in the middle of class that using the n-word was offensive) or slammed against lockers by bullying teachers. I didn’t give a shit as I knew I was right, my daughter is the same way although she is wiser than me, she reads feminist literature, communist theory, Angela Davis and others. I gleaned my philosophy from Woody Guthrie, Kurt Vonnegut, the Clash and Huck Finn. When I was in my mid-forties, my marriage was disintegrating like a cardboard box left out in the rain. We were both unhappy but loved each other in such a mammoth way—it did not seem possible that two people with so much love could live in such emotional silence. I had been sober for nearly fifteen years and finally, out of dire depression went back to counseling. The edge of the bed is where I would sleep, my wife slept on the other edge and some nights I would creep downstairs and log into my computer searching for some connection or I would slip into Bruno’s bed and listen to his soft breaths next to me and stare at the ceiling. “Why do you leave our bed in the middle of the night?” Merijn would ask me in the morning, her eyes pleading and her voice taunt with anger and tension. “I don’t know, you are always mad at me” and while I would flip it back on her, a dangerous emotional game of ping-pong I truly did not know was transpiring between us.

                After talking with the psychologist who was an expert in the subtitles of what I was going through he explained to me that I was not uncommon, that he had many people, mostly men who had been sober for about as long as I had whose lives had slowly unhinged emotionally. My subconscious was operating on a different level than the rest of my brain—I was being powered by a screaming voice that was telling me things that simply were not true. Mostly that I did not matter.

                I imagine we are born with a massive empty space, one that is gleaming with shine, a polished universe devoid of anything but truth. The space is slowly filled, redesigned like a manic interior decorator constructing staircases to rooms with only one entrance, one room here then another until the rooms are all wedged together like slums on the side of a mountain. On top of the rooms, packed together as if they were shove-stacked into grandma’s junk room there is still the truth gasping for air as if it were the vacationers in the Poseidon Adventure, bobbing their heads above the rising water while the capsized luxury liner tries to drink in the ocean. But the truth slides between the rooms, like air and works it magic by slowly dismantling each room, acting like wind against sandstone. When the rooms are finally leveled, they leave a scar almost a ghost limb within our psyche—still there but not at all.

                In addressing my alcohol problem all those years ago, there were moments when clarity struck me dumb although dumb is not the correct word here, they actually struck me lucid. There were many experiences that happened, small discoveries—innocent like a child’s eyes ingesting a flower, a turtle poking her head out of her shell—small but transformative. One afternoon I was sitting in my office when we were living in Gainesville, my ex-wife was teaching at the university and I was alone amongst my records, the vintage clothing I was selling on ebay waiting for the dial-up internet to slowly load the photos of ancient Brady-Bunch shirts to sell. I was in the midst of working on my Third Step of AA, I had to complete it for my treatment program and for my AA sponsor. This was an odd time for me in terms of my spiritual life, I had come to the realization that my theistic beliefs no longer worked for me—if they ever had-the discovery of Buddhist philosophy smacked me like cold water from a shower—I was awoken to something new. “Made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood him” is the third step but I didn’t believe in God, it was a dilemma, but it wasn’t really at all. My rooms were being slowly dismantled and tiny explosions were popping up in my brain, tearing apart the walls of those secret rooms—on that humid Gainesville morning, as sweat clutched on the back of my calves, my thighs sticking to the vinyl office chair I came to the realization that most of my actions, mostly non-actions in terms of my non-drinking changed me in subtle ways—time and space changed my mood if I allowed it. Running every morning helped a great deal, putting on my headphones, sliding a mix tape into my bulky Walkman I would be transformed by one step after another, one drum beat after another while I ran around Gainesville, exercising my secrets with the help of Superchunk, Springsteen and the Wedding Present blasting into my skull.

                I kept my secrets in a safe space, underneath walls constructed of guilt, bewilderment, a bit of shame tossed in along with a belief that everything was alright. Now. For years, the community that I discovered was the safety net I felt pulled onto, a joyous exercise of living that eased the rest of the hardships of life behind. An insular world was the one I was a part of, but it was outside of the world that that I was supposed to be a part of—one where personal responsibility—personal choice was dictated by how loud you played your music at night and if you could make it to your slummy job by 10 am. Nothing more. Nothlng less. Guitars were our bible, and amplifiers were the locomotive engines that powered us for far into the night that our ears and bodies still vibrated the next morning until the third cup of coffee pushed the last note out of our bodies the next afternoon. So, when it was time to get sober—to get real with what my ingesting alcohol had done for me for the past fourteen years it was frightening, a lot of rooms were constructed out of liquid and everything that came along with it, the broken relationships, the sex that left me wanting more but without the intimacy of a partnership—life had become, finally harder than what I thought it could be.

                Around one pm every afternoon in Gainesville, I would get home from the noon AA meeting I attended, and I would do my push-ups, slide into my running shoes, put the headphones on my head—checking to make sure that the batteries were working and start my run. It didn’t matter how hot it was, in fact the hotter it was the better it was as the anxiety that ran up and down my body was visible, eyes furrowed, I was restless but my daily seven-mile run did wonders. I would get back exhausted. At times when I was running the undisclosed parts of my marriage would burble up, twin spikes of betrayal would leave me shouting during these runs although the music was so loud, I could not hear myself. I would come back exhausted. Spent but always. Always. Always feeling better. Changed. There are times now when I look for a change in how I feel, there is never a longing for alcohol but there is a wanting to change the way I feel, to connect the feeling of disconnect to something the feels better, and the simple curiosity I felt on finding something new—besides alcohol, in those searing Florida days in those days that now stretch behind me like bridal train forgotten in the chapel,  and I forget what that period was like. It is simple to view the past as something that was something it wasn’t, remember the good times is a phrase that is uttered but my bones and cartilage only seem to recall the mutterings of anxiety, of the stark fear of aloneness.

                My father would pack us into his scarlet-colored Malibu, and we would drive into the hills of Southeastern, Ohio. The state route and back roads, zigzagging over the lumpy miniature mountains and fledgling woods that yearned to be forests but fell short because, well, this is Ohio where even the woods aren’t forests and the cities are still small towns. In the trunk were paints, watercolors, thick paper, jugs of water, empty jars, and if we were lucky a few bottles of warm pop. The two-lane roads would blister in the summer heat, newly laid asphalt would cover the potholes and short stretches of the road, at times it looked like chunks of black rocky caramel corn and would stick to the bottom of my father’s $500 car. “Shit” he would whisper to himself as he drove through a patch, the asphalt clicking under the tires only to get stuck on the bottom of the car like industrial freckles made by God. It was an escape for him, and for my brother and I. Although the twisty roads always made me car sick as my stomach dropped and jumped until he found a place to park and we would park at the side of the road on into a small dirt road so we could paint a barn, or field. He would turn the car off and pull everything out along with a few folding chairs. In my mind, this memory that has been boxing out so many other experiences that crowd the sky of my brain this experience happened a lot. The drives that we made to go painting but when I do the memory math, it didn’t happen very often. I only lived with my father from the 4^th grade to 6^th grade, two years and while I visited him every summer before fourth grade, I seldom spent time with him after moving out. And certainly, never painted with him after the 6^th grade. But although these excursions only happened 5 or 10 times, they were joyous for me—the made a mark, an impression just like my comic books and my favorite records. Remember the good times. But the other side of this lies the violence of my father, not just the physical violence but his words—which could be hateful and cruel towards my siblings, my mother, myself and to so many others whom he felt threatened by. It was there, in those words he spit and yelled that I began to construct the rooms made for my secrets, that I had no idea that they even existed. There were trapdoors being created that I didn’t even know would be there until I fell through them nearly thirty years later. “I’m not falling” I would tell myself and the chill of ancient scars tugged at my ankles, trying to yank me to the bottom of the river. Kicking up, I leave the mottled green and brown slimy bottom, upwards towards the sunlight—bursting through the thin line of water into the air. Open.

                There are usually three parts to my secrets, me, the other and then the secret formed between us—an invisible wall that now pushes out in its flexible partitions in my brain—it breaths as if it had just run a race, hands on hips, cheeks blowing in and out—this secret reminds me that there were times when, I felt not only frightened but excited. When there were two of us birthing this yet unknown experience, we may have laughed into each other mouths. I climbed on top of you and you climbed onto me, leaving us gasping. A giggling, furtive act and as we laid staring at the ceiling afterwards you held my hand, finalizing the walls of that concealed room we had just created. “I feel evil.” I did not know if that was spoken in giddiness or remorse. Probably both.

My marriage had fallen apart, a slow sinking that took years, the foundation built upon quicksand, so much of my life felt like quicksand but at the beginning we were sure we were different. She was different, European, two parents still married, finishing her Masters degrees, more beautiful than any person I had ever seen—in real life or a movie, she spoke gently to me her voice a soft touch on my busy mind. A quieting gesture every time she spoke to me. And although the years before our marriage were filled with hidden lies I got sober within a year of our civil agreement—a commitment to transparency. But over time, after the children, after my own graduate degree, our voices turned sharp towards one another, we grew wary, I slept on the far side of the bed. I looked for other connections to feel alive—no longer the bottle but searching again—I was suffocating under a soft pillow of searching that had begun from the moment I fell into the world. Anyway, afterwards, both time and distance uncovered much of the rooms in my head, in my tiny two-bedroom apartment that I stuff with cut flowers whenever they are on sale (because I can), with stacks of records next to the blue turntable that spins from love, a gift, I unpack the rooms I created. Opening the light.

                Last night I walked with my partner, her small hands folded into mine, her blue eyes stealing small peeks at me as the April wind blew into us –we talked about our children. My daughter is fifteen, straight A’s, funny, creative—she loves to bake for her friends, she has good friends who also get straight A’s, they walk together and talk politics—feminist theory, a good kid. “Dad, if you want to sleep at Maggie’s this week when Bruno is at grandma’s you can” she volunteered the other day. I bring this up to Maggie who smiles, “well I know what I did when I was fifteen when my parents went out of town.” Me too, in fact my daughter is aware of it through my writing, “do you think she would do the things we would.” Concerned that my fifteen-year-old might be constructing her own scrumptious secrets while her father is across town, “you think she would do what we did?” Am I this naïve? “I’ll talk to her mother about being careful” I say, satisfied with my own answer. We cross the busy street and I pull her hand close to me, keeping out the worry of things I will not longer be able to control as if I could at all. Saskia asks me often about my friends, many who are no longer of this world, and mostly what I remember is the laughter, how funny they were, and sweet—everyone I remember was sweet. A hearty chuckle as Jerry Wick once sang. His was more of a hearty cackle that made the rest of the room feel both welcome and small. An incredible talent in and of itself. Jenny left a void but in that empty space she is still there, a ghost of broken dreams and shattered laughter. Edo with his warm smile, his soft eyes searching outwards. My grandmother, her eccentric beliefs and mischievous laughter. They all felt the world more than anybody should, they were the small hairs on the roots of trees searching for nutrients. “We laughed a lot” I tell Saskia, this is my explanation. I tell her that she needs to laugh a lot during life. It breaks down the things we unknowingly create. As we turn the corner into the neighborhood, my partner leans close to me—whispers a joke that only we will get as we riff on something absurd down the sidewalk for several blocks these secrets are ours and they are filled with our truth.

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Book Announcement: “Love, Death and Photosynthesis” to be published by Don Giovanni August 6th.

After many years of rewrites, edits and bumbling through life events my first book is set to be published by Don Giovanni on August 8th. I am incredibly humbled and proud of the book. Pre-orders are available by following this link. From my understanding pre-orders are very important for sales. Below is some early reactions for the book.

““Love, Death, & Photosynthesis is such a generous text. One that offers both a timeline and a soundtrack of living. One that populates a world with people who could easily be your kind of people, immersed in days and nights that could be your days and nights. I loved this book for how it acts as both an intimate profile of a time and era, and also a mirror through which a reader can see their own history, their own affections, and their own music.”-Hanif Abdurraqib author of They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“”What a painful, funny, deep-souled chronicle Bela Koe-Krompecher has written of his life in one of the great American underground music scenes. Two beautiful and very human ghosts haunt this story, and this book is a monument to their gifts, but it’s also a brutally honest exploration of the dreams, diseases, passions, disappointments and tragedies that plagued their lives, as well as the author’s. Finally, though, it’s a clear-eyed celebration of what it means to build your life around music and share it with those you love, and of the endurance of all that feeling unleashed by a certain guitar sound and drum beat when you’re a kid. The feeling may fade, but it never really disappears. In fact, it may save you again when you least expect it.”-Sam Lipsyte author of “Venus Drive” & “Home Land”

“”This is not a love song, or a rock memoir, or a book about getting sober, or an unflinching look at mental illness — though it is in part all of those things —  or a book really about much in particular except everything, ever, in the way that the particular can sometimes illuminate the general in unexpected and deeply affecting ways. Bela has somehow managed to capture the love, loss, and longing that he and a handful of music- and alcohol-besotted friends/lovers experienced at a specific time (mostly the 90s)  in a specific place (mostly Columbus, Ohio) in unpolished, raw-kneed prose as lucid as the amber light of a sunset slanting through a bar window on High Street. It’s a fucking masterpiece, and it will break your heart.”-Jim Greer, novelist and screenwriter

“Bela Koe-Krompecher’s Love, Death & Photosynthesis is a remarkable book: an exploration of indie rock, a memoir of drinking and, then, not drinking, and ode to Columbus, Ohio, and most of all an elegy for a handful of musicians—particularly the haunting singer Jenny Mae—who lived hard and bled art and died too young. Koe-Krompecher, a co-founder of Anyway Records, is one of the spindles that keeps the indie-rock world spinning and Love, Death and Photosynthesis is a wild, real tender combination of Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Michael Azzerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life. Hell, Love, Death and Photosynthesis isn’t even a book—it’s a juke box, the wonderous kind that you find in a dive bar and that seems, suddenly, to contain every song you need to hear.”-Daniel A. Hoyt, author of This Book is Not For You

““Bela so beautifully writes about the connection between love, identity and an underground music scene- if music’s been the way you’ve made sense of the world this book will move you to tears.” –Matt Sweeney, VICE/Guitar Moves

“Anyone who spent the 90’s watching bands in half-empty bars and mixing their brains with other underground misfits will recognize themselves in the great stories Bela Koe-Krompecher tells in Love, Death & Photosynthesis. But Bela’s vivid memories are full of surprises too, and there’s something universal about the way he unravels his past, giving it an emotional weight that resonates beyond all the lost nights and dearly departed comrades.”-Marc Masters, contributor to Pitchfork & The Wire, author of “No Wave”

“In Love, Death & Photosynthesis, Bela Koe-Krompecher gives us a memoir that arrests, entrances, repulses even as it fascinates, pulls the reader close enough to whisper in the ear, holds at arm’s length to assess life’s ruins, and explores the sanctuaries we build within and around that wreckage. It’s a book born of fresh young Ohio corn fields and autumnal brass marching bands, just as it inhabits barrooms dank with despair yet illuminated by the melodic rings and howling squalls of music—the ever-present, blessed music—that holds it all together. Crushingly sad and defiantly hopeful, it’s a paean to Jenny Mae, it’s On the Road for the Rust Belt, it’s a desperate diary of struggling for equilibrium in a wildly spinning life, a broken-bottle bare-knuckled account of the ’90s Columbus music scene, and a sober love letter to hope and forgiveness. There’s real blood and tears and, yes, laughter in these pages.” —Matthew Cutter, author of Closer You Are: The Story of Robert Pollard and Guided By Voices

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“I”m guessing I met both Bela and Jerry on Mudhoney’s first stop in Columbus circa 1988, but it’s a bit murky. Whenever, it was an instant kinship based on music, records, & booze. Fellow Travelers. I know these people, but if I didn’t, I’d feel like I did after reading this. A beautifully vivid, heartbreaking tale of friendships cut far too short.”-Steve Turner, Mudhoney

““Love, Death & Photosynthesis” is an incredible look at friendship, loss, creativity, and growth. Koe-Krompecher writes beautifully about the thrill of loving music, booze, late nights…..and facing everything that comes next. Throughout the story, he is able to honor the two very important friends he lost, who burned bright but left early. In explaining the ways they touched him and changed his life, he delivers a great reflection on grief and a hopeful tale of moving forward. Really amazing, super moving and, of course heartbreaking. A story beautifully told and does a lot to honor to both Jerry and Jenny-Craig Finn, The Hold Steady

“I never sat with Jerry Wick—on a double-date and drunk—through a Mel Brooks double-feature, violently laughing as our disgusted dates dashed out the theater doors. I never woke any morning to find a homeless Jenny Mae sleeping in my car’s front seat, torn candy wrapper and broken thorns stuck to her face. Nor did I sit with her as she played her haunting songs on the organ in her parents’ basement or have a jailhouse conversation in which she, in a too-rare lucid moment, explained the reasons for her addictions. In fact, I never met either of those underground musicians before they died young due to dissimilar, yet equally sad, circumstances. But I feel like I knew them. Bela Koe-Krompecher’s music-memorized and booze-drenched memoir, Love, Death & Photo Synthesis, introduced us. Then we became friends.”– Jeff Burlingame, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Kurt Cobain: “Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind” 

“In his candid decades-spanning memoir, Koe-Krompecher’s journey through the grayness of Ohio gets entangled in music, love, mental illness, loss, addiction, and death—but he leaves a sliver of hope. It’s a tribute to his gone-too-soon friends and musicians Jenny Mae—who “burned brighter than the surface of Mercury” —and Jerry Wick—who “could light up a room with his humor, wit, and songs”—but it’s also an insight into the music industry, a hard-knocks upbringing, and battling addiction, sometimes told with hilarious anecdotes. Koe-Krompecher’s non-fiction dirty realism is the stuff Raymond Carver would’ve written if he had lived in Ohio. In the end, it’s music—and friendship—that saves us”-Garin Pirnia, author of Rebels and Underdogs: The Story of Ohio Rock and Roll

Ephemera

                On the east wall of the small ranch house where my grandmother lived for over thirty years an old stereo consul complete with built in television, speakers and turntable was covered in plants, glass trinkets and small decorative plates. Above them was a wall covered in photographs, most were black and white, they spoke of a different world where my father and uncles wore matching dark shorts and white shirts, black socks pulled up almost to the knees, my grandmother staring down at them as they gathered around her. Like a proud hen, her eyes beaming while they all smiled into the camera, in the background of these photos were palm trees and one could almost see the invisible heat that rose from the concrete that surrounded them. These photos were taken in Caracas, Trinidad, and Spain, they lived in Caracas, were taught English in Trinidad, and travelled to Spain with her—she insisted they be giv4n the opportunity to leave their life in Venezuela. She was an immigrant to that South American country, forced by the Second World War to sculpt a new life as a woman in her thirties from the wealth she was accustomed to in Budapest. Eventually her children would move to the United States, all settling in Columbus, Ohio where they, after fits and starts made themselves Americans, taking in American football, owning trucks, campers and enjoying fast food. The other photos climbed up the wall like ivy, marking out the memories of her life and the lives of the generation before, the images of frozen ghosts on her walls. There were knick-knacks and other ephemera on the walls, mementos of her travels, a small windmill clock from the Netherlands, a miniature mask from Morocco, small plastic men she put up for me and my brother; “The blue one is Zoltan and the yellow one is Bela” and we believed these solid-colored top hatted men were, indeed, somehow us. In the middle was the Krompecher Coat-of-Arms dating from the thirteenth century, not only was her wall a reminder of a life well lived, but it also was there to prove the family’s bona-fides. There was the menu from her father’s famous Budapest restaurant “Gundel’s” as well as photos from members of the Krompecher family that had served in the Hungarian parliament. These images were imprinted on us as children, that my grandmother and especially her father was someone special, anything less than felt like failure. The images provided not only motivation but a sense of familial loyalty.

                On the south wall of my apartment between my wooden desk and the front door sits two pine shelves made for records and along the top are two Hungarian dolls that are dressed in traditional celebration attire, one of them has her face chewed out from my old dead bad-dog, next to that sits an empty pint of whisky I had bought and drank on an incredibly weird night in Caracas, back when it was safe to travel to that city that sits among the clouds. With mountains looming around its plentiful skyscrapers, I was lost in the midst of the effects of that whiskey, the lights a blur to my eyes while I wondered how Jenny Mae and I would get back to my uncle’s apartment. The whiskey drank all my money, and it was not until a kind toothless taxi driver drove us home for free. The bottle a remembrance to both human kindness and the haze of being nineteen.  There is a painting by my son that hangs above the shelf and next to it a small painting my partner had commissioned for me, a wonderful chunk of wood that reminds me of love and thoughtfulness. Above the mantle on the east wall sits a print by Billy Childish, hanging above Buddhist cards and reminders, this painting is also a reminder of love. On top of bookcase next to the mantle, that comes from my childhood, it was once canary yellow and now is a subtle beige there are photos of my mother, my son when he was six months old—his happy grin stretching across the years, a framed picture of Chenrezik who the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion is. There is a copy of Wind-Up a fanzine by my friend Liz with a note attached to it introducing herself via US Mail, when small packages containing messages constructed of thought and time arrived in post office boxes—the care involved in sending this is still not lost on me. On the same shelf sits a small vase of dried flowers with a note from my lover and below all of these are rows of books and records. Books of poetry, of eastern thought, of recovery, graphic novels, and fiction. Most have traded time with me, imparting humor, wisdom and tears through their pages and I, in turn have given them my attention.

                There are photos of my children on the walls, both taken in the Netherlands, one of my daughter when she was eight, wearing a scarf over her head as she looks out the window of a train. I think we were coming back from the sea. The other photo, of my son is when he was four, this one also taken in the Netherlands, he is naked standing on the old remnants of a pier that had been taken by the water, his hands outstretched as if he was getting ready to hug the water while he holds a bag of chips in one hand. I have other pictures and paintings on the walls, one of Richard Brautigan a favorite writer that was painted by Derek Erdman, another drawing by Daniel Johnston, and walls filled with records, CD’s and box sets. Some of these things I have wanted to put away for years, there are two boxes of “things” I have had sitting next to one of my couches and one next to my dining room table that have not moved over the past two years when I moved into this small apartment.

                The apartment usually smells of coffee and onions two things I consume nearly every day, the stacks of books and the unattended boxes can make me feel guilty as they have sat ignored for far too long. Some of these things are the putty that can hold my sadness in, or my joy depending on what I may be feeling on a given day, a given hour, a given moment.

                When I was a child, I collected things: Matchbox cars, football cards, comic books, records and at the suggestion of my grandfather I collected stamps for a few years but while these captured my imagination, I needed some encouragement to continue and because of the lack of interest by my father my interest in philately soon diminished. In grade school my brother and I would tape our favorite football player cards to the tops of our desks making for a bumpy desk, but it helped get through the drudgery for fourth grade math when one could dream of the exploits of Franco Harris or Jack Lambert while contemplating fractions. Fuck fractions. The miniature cars I collected where things I played with until the fourth grade when in one afternoon of playing with my friend Mark, I realized I had suddenly outgrown them, I put them away and only pulled them our years later when my ex-wife started an interest in them. Apparently, they were not a thing in the Netherlands. My son and I would play with some of the ones I was able to pass down to him but a few years ago, he realized he too, had outgrown them and his are now confined to a box in his room. The comics I collected with my brother were split between us, he bought some large collections in his twenties and there are several long boxes of Marvel comics that sit in the closet. Occasionally I pull them out and try to get my son interested in them, he only asks me how much they are worth. Saskia on the other hand did show an interest in Archie comics which she collected for several years and graphic novels. They both tend to like records, Saskia has a small collection at the end of my towering shelf of records and she plays them when she cooks and reads downstairs, her tastes are towards the emotional and she tends to be drawn to indie female artists: Girl in Red, Phoebe Bridgers and Stella Donnelly.

                Many years ago, I was visiting my father and his wife, I was in my early twenties trying to repair a relationship that had been cracked, punted, and bruised—there was hope in their living room and they poured me hot coffee, brought me homemade Hungarian cookies, and asked about my life which at that time was centered on music and extraordinarily little else. I had dropped out of college a few years prior, was working in a record store, and had discovered an underground community that in no way I could explain to my very catholic and very conservative father. “Why don’t you go back to school?” he asked, his wife chimed in “You are too smart to be in a record store, it’s unhealthy.” My inner response was to inform them they knew nothing of my life, had showed little interest in much of my life and that my thought of the future involved listening, selling, and making records—instead, I replied, “yeah, one day I’ll go back to college.” His office was in the downstairs of his house in Athens, Ohio. As one of the few practicing architects in Southeastern Ohio during the nineteen-seventies he won a lot the contracts from the state and the county and he had a fairly large office staff of architects and engineers. They worked on the state hospital in town, many of the larger buildings and businesses in downtown Athens as well as many home improvements. By all measure he should have been well off but when my brother and I lived with him we were poor, mostly made our own dinner which consisted primarily of box macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, frozen pot pies, cereal and eggs. Once a month he would splurge and buy a $5 Domino’s pizza. He sold his office building and moved his practice into the downstairs of his house, a kitchen door shutting off the living quarters from the office. We sat in the meeting room, which was a white couch, several comfortable designer office chairs, and a glass coffee table. The walls were decorated with his wife’s abstract artwork. When I used the restroom, I had to walk through the kitchen door and it is felt like I had entered the bowels of a museum or government building, this is how they really lived. The kitchen was spotless and there were massive jugs of wine on the floor, the food on counter was healthy, wheat germ, oats, cannisters of nuts and bowls of fruit. If I took to long in the bathroom, they could sense my prying investigative eyes, I would draw in as much as I could to get some knowledge of a man, I did not know but needed too. “Bela, what are you doing back there” his deep voice would bellow. ‘Nothing, just looking for a glass for water” as I wondered what the upstairs looked like. “Come back here, Ildiko will get it for you.” He had secrets he didn’t want me to know. So, I would go back and sit on the edge of the couch waiting for his disapproving beatdown of my life choices. And in my quest to have a connection with him I would accept his judgement only to disregard it as soon as the door shut behind me. It was always emotional harassment. On one of these visits as I was leaving, Ildiko said she had something for me, “Bela you left something here and we need to give it to you” she got up, “wait, I will go find it.” I looked at my father, I could not think of anything I would have left at his house, these visits were infrequent, and I stood up and made my way towards the door. “I need to go; I have some people I have to meet.” I did not add that there were friends I would be seeing at the Union. “Wait, she will be back in a moment.” We made more small talk by the front door, his displeasuring lecture over my life choices a silent barricade between us until his wife appeared with a small blue and yellow winter cap in her hands. “You left this year and I thought you might need it.” I had indeed left this small Webelo scout toboggan that I had left when I moved out of his house when I was eleven years old. It was tiny in my hands, “I washed it for you.” I was now 22. “Oh, thank you.” She seemed pleased with herself for remembering to return this hat to me eleven years later. “Yes, it’s cold out. Wintertime, you should wear your hat.” Thanks for the advice. Last year I gave the hat to my kids. “Honey, its cold out, please wear a hat.” Saskia held the cap in her teenage hands, “didn’t your dad regift this to you?” I paused, as the years sprawled out in my mind, ‘well not this hat, he just returned in, you are thinking of the Ohio State Bart Simpsons shirt my grandmother had me wrap for him one Christmas and he gave it to me the next year for my 21^st birthday.” “He did?! Wait, why did you grandmother give your dad a Bart Simpson shirt, wasn’t he old?!” Smiling, I explained “She bought it because it said Ohio State Buckeyes on it and she thought Bart was cute, and yeah, he was probably 50 years old. Anyway, he gave it to me the next Christmas.”

                “What?! Why did she do that?!” I cried into the sterile stiff hotel pillow, outside the Miami sun was baking the red Chevy Malibu that carried us from Ohio—it was too hot to go outside, we were sunburnt from swimming in the motel pool. The drive took over 20 hours, but my father did it in one shot, drinking thermos after thermos of gas station coffee, talking to himself and rolling down the window and sticking his face into the wind. He refused to stop. There were three of us piled in the backseat, my sister on one side, my brother on the other and me, the youngest stuck on the hump. At various times during the trip, I would curl up on the floor and try to sleep. We passed the hours trying to read, counting VW Bugs, looking at various license plates, singing and teasing each other. My father flipped through the FM dial, where he mostly chose soft rock or Paul Harvey. My aunt Milagros sat in the front seat and occasionally they would speak to each other in Spanish, leaving us to think they were talking about us, a secret code that they used when they needed to talk about “adult” matters. I later found out that they did not like each other, and it was natural that they did not, my aunt was outspoken, a woman and considered some of the mythmaking of my grandmother about Hungarians was just that, myths, and stories. “Your grandmother is nuts” she would tell me when I was older, then she would add “so is your father, something is seriously wrong with that man.” She was right about one of them. I was frozen with panic as I realized that Milagros had thrown away my favorite blue blanket that I.  been carrying around for years, it was thread bare in spots, and the smooth ends had unraveled but left small crinkly threads that I would rub against my nose while I sucked my thumb. I carried it around the house and when I had a friend sleep over, I would hide it under my pillows, so they dare not see that even as a ten-year-old I still clutched on to my blankie for comfort. When it was in the washer my anxiety would rise and I would be disappointed as it usually took a while to replace the comforting smells it held for me, syrup, cereal, cats. Before we got in the car for the trip Milagros sniffed at it, “That blanket is not going with us on our trip to Venezuela, you are way to old to have a security blanket.” My siblings made an effort to explain the importance of the blanket to me and my emotional state. The blanket had provided comfort for me through my parents’ divorce, multiple moves, meeting and leaving friends and at that time my fifth school in five years. Milagros had thrown the blanket out during one of our stops, it was mostly likely now covered in fast food bags, coffee grounds and diapers in some truck stop in Tennessee. She was right, I didn’t need to be lugging around my childhood blanket as I was getting ready to start middle school in a few years and shortly after that trip to Venezuela I quit sucking my thumb, finding other ways to sooth myself—through reading and music.

                I knock on the door of my old house, the one that my children still spend half their time in, the one whose wooden floors will need to be sanded again as my effort to sand them some sixteen years ago was never particularly good but Merijn appreciated it enough to keep the floors in all their misfitted blunted shimmering manner, the murky gloss a testament to my bumbling efforts of being a handyman.  This house holds many memories and as I finally let myself in, it holds new memories now; ones for the children and her. I walk in and it is the house she always wanted, with new furniture replacing the old, white walls where shadows climb and fall in a dance of creativity-learning dance steps from the sun, the duck and stop like gray lizards soaking up the shine. Gone are stacks of compact discs, records stacked against the far wall, books not put away and mounds of letters and bills, replaced by more whiteness and order. It isn’t reclaimed but remade into something hers, theirs while the piles of music, books and bills have migrated to my house. I need to unload of many of these things. I walk into my son’s room, on one wall he has hung up the skateboard he has worn out and collected: his first, that is nearly worn though—a Baker skateboard, next to it hang two others that he has whittled down practicing ollie’s and other tricks along High Street and various skate-parks, a Dinosaur Jr. board he got for Christmas last year. On the other walls hang his artwork, a tee-shirt he designed with “Zero Zero” superimposed on one another, grunge life indeed and old flyers on his walls from my days when I booked shows. One, for the Magnetic Fields has a painting of his mother and in a near kiss while I’m holding a beer. I enter his sister’s room, one wall is basically a giant shelf of books she has read, F. Scott Fitzgerald, manga, fantasy, and some new additions of her recent forays into politics, feminism, and social justice. Some, like Angela Davis where her grandmother’s. She has posters up, signed Mountain Goats and Superchunk posters. She is a resplendent teenager. There are a few things I wish I still had when I was a teenager, things that helped center me and expanded my imagination beyond the cornfields and existential heaviness of rural Ohio, my dog-eared split-spined copy of Breakfast of Champions, the 90 minute Maxell cassette of R.E.M.’s “Murmur” on side A and “Reckonging” on the other—played nearly every day my junior and senior years, or the photo of Lou Reed that hung on my wall—portals to something else, something more dangerous and bigger than the tightly wound world of small town America, where I felt like a proud outsider every day of high school.

                There were railroad tracks that lined the outskirts of Athens, they came up from West Virginia and over the grand Ohio River, hauling passengers, wood and more importantly coal into town and then hauling them north towards Columbus and all over the Midwest. When I was a child, there were still some houses that still burned coal and between the railroad station and the hospital was a gigantic hill of coal. We had a friend, Todd who lived a few blocks from us on Mill Street—they were poor, his father a grounds keeper for Ohio University. They had a tiny two-bedroom house, Todd slept on day bed that sat behind his parents La-z–Boy chairs, they still heated their house with coal and kerosene. When we went over to his house after playing pick-up football, his mother would make us grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, we would spend the rest of the afternoon trading football cards and playing with the miniature football helmets we would buy for a quarter out of the novelty machines at Kroger. The tracks split through the town, and we would walk them as we played army or cowboys and Indians in the fields next to the track. There was an abandoned house in the middle of one of the fields and we would use it as our “headquarters”, and onetime we discovered a cache of Playboy magazines and records. The men’s magazines were quickly snapped up by all the boys to be smuggled into bedrooms for late night discovery while my brother and I grabbed the records. Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, a Motown collection, Mad Magazine Twists Rock and Roll, we listened to them when we got home. I still own them, and every time I flip through my records I hold onto a slice of memory. Bruno and I sometimes pull out the green nylon gym bag that my brother and I transported our miniature football helmets over forty years ago and tape out a field and play with the same game we made up on the floor of Todd’s house. He tells me as we laugh that this was something he loved to play together when he was “little” which means just five years ago or so, his world will still be unfolding as if the future sky is constructed of wrapping paper for him to unfurl.

                I keep things to remind me of love, of connections I felt and, perhaps, lost—always something sweet–a reminder of feeling accepted, of laughing and exchanging tenderness. Every memory is just that, a memory of something I can share through words, to tell a story not so much for anybody but for myself—to recall something that happened, that changed me so much I needed a token to recall it because I knew even as a child that my memories would slide into nothingness—an effort to consul myself. I never kept the items that remind me of pain, I did not keep the snot filled shirtsleeve I wiped my nose with after my father slapped me across the face of that red Malibu when I was eleven years old because I was not the child, he wanted me to be, nor did I keep pencils and the rumpled papers of third grade when I felt alone attending yet another new school. There are other things I do keep that remind me both of my failures and successes, my wedding ring that I keep on my dresser— not a symbol of a marriage that came up short, but of a union that changed, one that brought two wonderful people into the world. The ring signifies a love that produced joy, struggles and, yes divorce but most importantly that produced children that I adore. I keep paintings of my father, when I see them, I feel both a tinge of hurt, a prick into the softness of my being but there are also memories of paining with him alongside the winding roads of Southeastern Ohio, of those brief episodes of soft love he showed me. I don’t hang them anymore, realizing that the hurt outweighs the comfort and realizing that no matter how many times a day that bruise was there to stay. They sit in the closet. Of course, there are some things I could not keep, a favorite dinner atop a sunflower kissed field in Italy while staring up at the Milky Way, or sing-screaming “Tractor-Rape Chain” with Guided by Voices at Stache’s in 1994, or holding my lover’s hand while curling up on her couch while she lays her head against mine, her fingers tracing the veins along my arm, her breath against my neck providing the music of acceptance. I keep pictures, trinkets, photos and even plates from my life—at some point they will mean nothing, perhaps given to the local thrift store when I pass on, the memories of my life destined to fall under the spell of the mundane fluorescent lights of Goodwill, but for now they hang about me, twinkling and winking at me that I am, not alone.

Jerry Wick-20 years later

Twenty years ago today I walked into Used Kids Records and Ron House told me that Jerry Wick had been killed by a hit and run driver earlier that morning while riding his bicycle home after a night hanging around the places that felt like family to him: Used Kids, Larry’s Bar, Bernie’s and even BW-3 where the confines of warmth, music, alcohol and friendly faces made the world outside a bit safer, softer and easier—it’s ironic that the world outside, literally killed him as he rode home with a pizza on his bike handles.  Jerry was, for a period in the nineties my best friend and was family to me and for many of those whom I regarded family during that period of my life, the other staff members at Used Kids, the members of the New Bomb Turks and a few others from our insular scene—we were family and Jerry was the prodigal son who would at one moment make a comment to have us all erupt with laughter and the next somehow insult all of us with a single utterance.

                When I think of Jerry I think of his toothy grin and his laughter that would cause his shoulders to chug up and down as if they were the wheels on a locomotive, and his energy was like a train, even down to spitting black smoke into the air. We were drawn to each other by our love of music, by the one thing that never turned on us as we staggered out of broken and at times abusive childhoods into our early twenties, knees wobbly from our adolescence years but fortified by vinyl records, alcohol, and a charm we didn’t even realize we had. We were broken but confident that no matter what, we knew what we didn’t want and that was enough. We also had a built in soundtrack which was the music we created and took part in, our lives were a mix-tape to ourselves with our evenings filled with bands we would tape and plaster ourselves to in the form of the flyers we hung around High Street to have people join in our party, our lives: Guided by Voices, Sub-Pop bands, K records, Ass Ponys, Karl Hendricks, Superchunk, the bands were endless. Anyway, this was our life and it was safe, it felt safe even though we walked on the invisible line of life precariously, we had friends die of overdoses, car accidents and by suicide which haunted us both.

                Jerry pulled me from the rubble of a failed suicide attempt, something that was an exercise in both courage and fear—mostly fear but that has been something that I have had to accept in my life, like buying an old house with a cracked foundation. That’s me, I have learned to tend to it. Jerry nursed me back to health, mostly with laughter some music and even ambition, it was his idea to make Anyway records a viable thing and although it was something that drove a wedge between us after a few years it provided hope and even the simple thing of having a plan for anything even if it is as minor of putting out a seven inch record by a punk rock band that played the smelly cramped stages of Stache’s and Bernie’s. It was something. And something we clutched onto. My partner is a poet, she is nine years younger than me and we have realized that we had been at Larry’s at the same time, her stepping into her twenties, and me stumbling into my thirties. Jerry and I would dread going to Larry’s on Monday nights-poetry nights and we would grumble to each other as we headed over to BW-3 or Bernie’s until 10 when the poetry would end. We were too scared of the honesty I suppose while Jerry was comfortable hiding his words behind his guitar the bravery of reading in front of people was something we could not do. In the early 90’s Gilmore Tamney asked me to read some of my writing at Monkey’s Retreat, my hands shook so violently, and I clutched the beer I brought to the reading—I can still remember it. I did not read again for years and the last time I did, with my children in the crowd of an audience of poets and writers, I wept as I read with only a glass of water for assistance. Braver now than I was then.

                Jerry and I soon exhausted each other after a few years, he grew annoyed (and perhaps jealous) of my wanting to have a more traditional relationship—I was involved with my (now ex) wife and was trying to grow up—to limit my drinking which I was failing at. When he died in 2001, we were hanging out more, his band-Gaunt, had mostly broken up but he was working on his solo music and as a chef. He had newer dreams he was starting to form, he had bought a house, and although the dreams we had bought into in our twenties did not come out the other end of the decade as we had hoped, there was some semblance that something else could be possible. I would not call it hope at this point, perhaps it was more a rickety awareness that things could be ok even if they were different. We were now in our thirties, old in our punk rock world view but quite young from my vantage point of a fifty-two-year-old.

His final day was spent doing what he loved, he hung out at Used Kids most of the afternoon, drinking and listening to records with me and Mike Rep, we had a beer at Larry’s and I walked home to my more domesticated life and he was later seen at Bernie’s and Larry’s before picking up a pizza and taking the last ride home.

                His death was a turning point for me, it shook me deeply then as it does now—Jerry dying made me look more honestly at my own life, my own struggles and what I needed to do. In 2001 and more importantly 2002, I did not know what I wanted but I was certain what I didn’t want and that was to continue drinking and hurting not only those whom I loved the most but also myself. I was tired of hurting. Jerry was a critical man, one who had opinions about things he did know anything about but of things that hurt him—love, women, family, institutions—of course most of us have these same opinions about the very things Jerry did, things we know extraordinarily little about at that young age. Although pain and love seemed to brighter than, sharper and stinging, I realize now—twenty years later that they arrive in different packages and colors, some slide in softly, a hand clutching mine, the roll of my lover’s feet against my toes on the couch, a nuzzle, my son’s soft curly hair bobbing up and down as he laughs and my daughter asking me if she can make me food. I used to think of beginnings and endings which I no longer believe in, things just change, morphing into something else—shape shifting over time like shadows across the floorboards, almost unnoticed-I do not judge the shadows and I am trying not to judge anything anymore—things just move into something else. Jerry died and his life ended, I do not know about what came next for him, and there isn’t a day that doesn’t go by where he does not cross my mind—my own big life changes started with Jerry dying. Although Jerry has not been physically with me as I have gone through my life since that day, a long marriage and divorce, two children, falling in love again, three college degrees, writing, music, lots of pizza…sobriety, his memory has been with me every step of the way. A constant encouragement.

December 2020

“Dad, c’mere…. hurry.” My son, Bruno, was pointing at a tree hanging from a thin rope, surrounded by hundreds of other cut trees all dangling from the same type of cheap rope, like we had walked into a butcher shop just for trees. Their green carcasses swaying in the breeze. “Look at this one” he was all smiles, pointing at a thin sparse tree, one side devoid of branches, the top slightly dented and the base of the trunk crooked.

“Dude, I don’t know…it’s kinda um, special needs.”

“Exactly, we need a Charlie Brown tree and this one is the Charlie Browniest” he walked around the tree pointing out all its broken charms.

 “Bruno, can we get on that will hold at least a few ornaments?” his fifteen-year-old, sister Saskia sighed, clearly annoyed.

 “Sas, look—it’s perfect. Dad needs this tree in his house.”

 Laughing she concurred, “Yeah dad, Bruno’s right you need this tree—it’s a must for your apartment.”

 I fetched one of the Mexican workers at Oakland Nursery who walked over smiling, wearing a floppy Santa hat whose fluffy white top fell over his brown and cracked forehead, “Merry Christmas sir, let me help you.” I showed him the tree and his smile froze, “ah, hah.” he paused, “so you want this tree? This little guy?” His smile tilted towards nervousness, ‘this one?” he repeated himself.

“Yeah, this one.” I looked at Bruno, who looked at the man, who looked at me and I nodded.

Reaching up to cut the rope, he asked again, “you sure, we have a lot of other ones” scanning a hand towards the legion of trees swaying around us,

 “Yeah, they want this one” I answered, with eyebrows raised.

 Whistling he took out a small pocketknife and cut it down, pulled a small yellow tag from the tree’s hindquarters and directed us to pull our car around to pick it up. “Sir I will have it ready for you, Merry Christmas” he spoke with a Mexican accent,

 “Merry Christmas to you as well.”

                With the small tree strapped to the top of my Volkswagen sedan, one of my first steps into adulthood that I bought last year at the age of fifty-one we headed for home with a pit-stop at the grocery store for eggnog.

“Dad, it’s gross” Bruno offered.

“Get the good stuff” Saskia chimed in, meaning buy the $6 kind and not the store-brand that sells for $3 and is, indeed gross.

“O.K.,” I slipped on my mask and headed in, buying a cheap bouquet of starting-to-wilt flowers as I headed for the dairy department. This was our second Christmas in my small two-bedroom apartment since I moved out, the divorce sandwiched in-between then and now. At home, we carried the tree in, Bruno secured it in the hard green-plastic stand while Saskia searched for the two small boxes of Christmas ornaments, I kept while I poured us the eggnog and made made homemade whip-cream for the hot chocolate. We settled into decorating the tree, which because of its courageously pathetic stature took all of ten minutes. “Well, what do you guys think” I asked as I stared as it leaned towards the bookcase, a decoration broke free from one of the limp branches and crashed to the floor. “I love it” Saskia said triumphantly, Bruno added, “it’s cool, it’s for sure a Charlie Brown tree.” He grabbed his skateboard and headed outside. I sat on one of the small couches I have, looked at the twinkling lights, Christmas music playing around us and asked Saskia if she would sit with me, “yeah dad, but then I have homework to do.”

                That night they were both upstairs, I lite candles, put on some choral Christmas music and read while the lights winked at me with its colorful lights. They are older now, long past the days of believing in Santa or Sinterklaas which has peeled some of the magic of Christmas away but not all of it. Their mother is Dutch, hence the many years of believing in Sinterklass and we would try to incorporate both the traditions into our lives but their mother, a very practical woman did not really go all in for the Santa aspect, so Christmas turned into something we travelled to my mother’s for and to make a nice dinner. Divorce does not ruin Christmas it just morphs into something else.

                I was in graduate school, attending Case Western Reserve in Cleveland one weekend a month for two years. Every year we had driven out to rural Licking County, Ohio to cut down our Christmas tree and it seemed to snow every weekend we chose to do it. Afterwards we would retreat to the small barn the on the farm and have hot cocoa while they prepared our tree for the hour ride home. Scanning the walls, we would see our pictures from years past hung up as the owners took snapshots of various families when they engaged in their yearly ritual. We could trace five years of tree cutting and measure the growth of the children, even though Bruno was still quite young while I was going to graduate school. The weekend before I had to go, two weeks prior to Christmas we had travelled to the far end of the farm, sitting on hay bales on the back of a flat bed tractor as the wind whipped into our faces as we rocked back and forth over the muddy fields. We walked to the top of a hill and the kids chased each other around the trees, until finally after some insistence we picked one out and I grabbed one of the small bowsaws we were given and cut the tree down, yanking it up over my shoulder we marched to the wooden hut where a barrel fire burned to keep us warm while we waited for the tractor to take us back to the barn. That night we decorated the tree and tucked the kids in, and the week went forward. The following Thursday evening we had a row, she resented me having to go to Cleveland and leaving her with the children for the weekend— “I only have two semesters left and I’m done.” I had guilt when I left, the children were young—Bruno just three that year and Saskia was six and this began the seeds of a divorce that would happen by the end of the decade.

                Sitting in class on Friday morning I felt my neck itch, and by midafternoon it became unbearable, so I went into the rest room and examined my neck in the bathroom mirror. It was red and I had a red rash the ran up over my ear and stretched over my neck. I had poison ivy. In December. I wondered how I could have gotten it and I realized that I must have gotten it from the Christmas tree. I called home that night to check in and told my family, who laughed at my Holiday misfortune. Saskia remarked it was a Charlie Brown thing that would happen. Of course.  

“Dad, remember that time you got poison ivy from the Christmas tree” Bruno remarks as he glides by me on his skateboard, “try not to skate in the house, yes I remember—I can be pretty dumb sometimes.” Bruno skates by me the opposite way, just missing my toes, “I’ll say” as he rolls to a stop against a shelf of records and books. “Dude, please don’t skate in the house.” He walks by me this time, “I’m not, see I stopped” as he enters the kitchen and pours himself a bowl of cereal. “

“Saskia, can you do me a favor and wrap the Christmas presents I bought yesterday?” I stare at my email.

She unplugs her headphones, “you want me to wrap the presents?”

“Yes, please…”

 She then finishes my sentence, “because you suck at it?”

 “Exactly.”

She adds, “you mean the ones you bought us yesterday that you don’t want us to know what they are?”

“Yes, exactly. Just don’t show Bruno his and act surprised when you open yours.”

“O.K., will you buy me dinner?” she starts looking for masking tape.

“ummm, yeah.” I am easily defeated.

                I grew up poor, splitting time between my mother’s and father’s house made summers and holidays busy. At certain period in my childhood, my father lived in Athens, Ohio while we lived on Long Island and Virginia, and much later in rural Ohio. We would travel to Ohio for Christmas, hitting both sets off grandparents as well as my father, an awkward man who was even more of an awkward father. He was prone to laughing to himself and did not seem extremely interested in getting to know his children, it was as if he had been given a book about children but declined to even open it. He tried though, one year he gave my almost teenager brother and myself gifts that were more appropriate for seven and eight years old. ‘Jesus Dad, you could have at least asked what we wanted” my brother scolded him, in that moment I felt for my father who had done some last-minute shopping so we would have something under our tree. In hindsight, that was giving him too much credit, he could have easily asked us what we wanted weeks before. My own parenting skills are, at times bereft of discipline—although the children know their mother and I love them very much, and they are sweet, caring, and funny. But I try hard to provide for them that I did not receive from my own father, that is a childhood filled with sweetness and laughter, and if they want a new pair of shoes, a new skateboard, a book or to eat out, I usually do this for them. I do not wait for Christmas or birthdays, which may decrease the magic of Christmas but in the end, I would rather have Bruno be able to skate for hours on a board he can practice on then wait three months for a new board after he was whittled down his last board. I am learning this thing as I go along. A tree grows crooked because that is what it knows. I get up off the couch, go to the other room and flip the record over, on the table are two glasses with the remnants of eggnog and Bruno’s half-finished hot chocolate. Saskia brings down a handful of presents, “here dad, when my big present comes in can I have it?” Smiling I look at her, “you don’t know what it is, do you?” “I think I do, you told me to pick two things and you would buy me one. Can I have it?” “No honey, you can on Christmas. It’s a tradition.” I am making up traditions as I go along.

                Saskia is swinging towards adulthood, soon her Christmases will be filled with trying to duck out and be with her friends, and perhaps, if COVID did strike us to our knees this year she would now be looking at the clock waiting for her getaway, but I think she has not inherited some of my escapism.

                Christmas of 1986 was magical, I stumbled into my first love who came a-caroling to my front door as fat snowflakes floated around Jenny Mae and our classmates. A few days later we went on our first date which consisted of drinking a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon in my bedroom and listening to the Car first record on repeat. That Christmas break my brother was home on leave from the Army, he had spent the past few months in Germany and had stepped into adulthood wearing a Kangol hat, pleated stone-washed blue jeans and carrying cassettes of classic country music he discovered in the mountains of Bavaria. I was a senior and biding my time until the end of the school year so I could make my escape into the world outside of Clark County, Ohio—fueled by records, books and an imagination that was larger than the cornfields that surrounded our house. The parsonage where we lived in had turned into a launching pad for a two-week party over the holidays, our stepfather, a Methodist minister was not there much as we drank case after case of beer upstairs while listening to Z’s tapes, Christmas music and my R.E.M. and Lou Reed records. My first grimy Christmas.

                This was a year where Christmas had turned into a long holiday party, where we straddle adulthood, adolescence and firmly at an age where we had little to any responsibilities. I would carry on this philosophy for as long as could, well into my early thirties. During the break we got a room at the Holiday Inn in Springfield, Ohio and crammed as many 17- and 18-year old’s into the small room. There was a pool that we invaded as well as the bar, where a lounge singer, with full-on Magnum PI mustache and combover grew frustrated with the constant interruptions we flung his way. “C’mon guys, please be quiet” he begged as he launched into another tired Holiday favorite, “I’ll have a blooooo-Christmas, without youuuuuuuu” he bellowed as if he were Elvis, but he was not, and we let him have it until we were kicked out of the bar. Retreating to the hotel room, we bribed the two security guards to try arrest one of our old classmates, pinning the abhorrent behavior we were engaged in on him. As they had him against the wall, checking for weapons we all broke and howled with laughter. Promptly thrown out of the hotel, the security guards somehow ended up back at the parsonage, having quit their jobs that night to follow us home. As four a.m. rolled around, we sang Christmas carols as one of the lay passed out on the stairs wearing a red Santa hat. The mystery of childhood Christmas melted away that year in a pool of Natural Light and marijuana smoke.

                I hold my children close, as we navigate lives that have left them with two different homes and parents who still are parenting partners but no longer are lovers. They tend to help me more than I think I help them, lifting my spirits and with quit wits our house is closer to comedy than any sort of traditional household. My goal it to bring them into adulthood with fearlessness and courage, to be able to roll with setbacks with humor, cleverness, and compassion. So far, so good. Nearly a year ago, I fell in-love again—she is lovely, funnier than me and as tender as the inside of love, vulnerable and soft. Her youngest still believes in Santa, and he has Bruno on one of our walks if Bruno still believed in Santa, I held my breath as the street-smart Bruno told me this. “And what did you answer, buddy?” I asked, tensing up. “I told Rhett of course I did, and he said, ‘thank God’”, Saskia asks Rhett if he is excited for Christmas and he grins, “Of course! Who isn’t!?” I hope that Saskia’s forays into late adolescent Christmas can wait until she is farther along into her twenties.

Bee Thousand 1992-2000

Bee Thousand. 1992-present.

photo by Jay Brown

                I recently pulled out my vinyl copy of Guided by Voices “Bee Thousand” which I had not listened to on vinyl since at least the mid-nineties. This doesn’t mean I haven’t listened to it, I had an advance cassette that lived most of it’s life in the Ford Tempo I drove at the time, it may or may not have migrated to the small pick-up truck I had in the late nineties. I also have a CD of it and have streamed it on my phone. There has been a reluctance to actually put the vinyl record onto my turntable, as well as some of their other records from an era that I feel an emotional attachment as well as a bit of hesitance too, I’m not sure why. There are a few other records from this time that have this same sort of push/pull attraction to, the names are not important—they all hold something within me that I cannot quite understand. One may think I hold something for them, but music only gives—it doesn’t take so I receive its gift and it may or may not curl up inside one of my cells and keep itself ready for duty whenever I call upon the special talents it brings.

photo by Jay Brown

                That time in my life, from the late 80’s to the late nineties are alike a painting full of smudges, all of them smushed into one another so I can’t recall what year is which and it really doesn’t matter unless I give my memories that much power—as if I got the date wrong it will negate the feeling associated with it. Autumn is a difficult period for me, one on hand it is one of my favorite times of the year, the shedding of leaves, the teeming colors of the trees making the landscape burn with a cacophony of red, pinks, yellows, oranges and yes, black. The rot in the branches set everything aglow, I am drawn to it—a certain part of me feels whole in the discord of change. A comfort. It also brings in the wisps of winter depression that, like my favorite songs live in my cells and burst open like morning lilies when the wind slips under my windowsill brining in the nips of winter.

                When I lived on North Campus, so many houses throughout the eighties and nineties, it seemed every other summer I was hauling my records from one block to the next block. I had finally ended up on East Patterson Avenue from 92-96 or so, a small clapboard house that stood in the shadows of Holy Name Catholic Church, a church where my brother had been baptized years before. I would walk to the record store, my Walkman in my hands listening to mix tapes that were built to shoot emotions throughout my being, tying both brain and body together, kicking leaves all the way to High Street. I had gotten an advance copy of “Bee Thousand” on a cassette, the cover just a piece of plain white folded paper like so many advance tapes of that time—they looked like a cassette version of Generic brands. I don’t know if Matador had sent it or maybe Bob Pollard had given it to me, but it was lodged in that Tempo’s tape deck. In May of that year a friend from Athens, Ohio had overdosed, and he was airlifted to Columbus. It took Ted about two weeks to finally die, and during those two weeks I fell in love with my first wife. At his funeral I played “Esther’s Day” on repeat, wondering what he felt like before he died—surrounded by his family and his friends while wires ran in and out of his body as if he were an appliance. And I also thought how I was going to extract myself out of a brief relationship I was involved in as I knew I was falling in love with another person.

                I was an uncommitted sort; it was difficult for me to move forward in love—something within me resisted feeling loved—it was easier to make someone smile than to lean into love. I held back and retreated into what I trusted, mainly records and alcohol. They were much safer than a relationship, less commitment, which was something that I knew little about—the sacrifices needed to be accountable and present. I would go home and wrap myself in records, playing them one after another, cracking open one beer and then the next until I hit that magical moment of bliss when my feelings melded with the songs. We were all one, the song, the alcohol and me. Or so I thought. Being broken has its advantages, looking for the glue to patch the cracks can be a lot of fun but the introspection it involves when stepping away and looking into the mirror is like holding one’s hand into the flames of the universe, at times I feel like the skin of a toasting marshmallow bubbling before I my burst into a small inferno.

                Robin and I married the following May, she moved out in October and I started sleeping with other people the week she left. We divorced that February; the marriage did not even come close to making it through the fall. I met my second wife the April following the annulment from Robin and we fell into each other immediately, and as I danced, crawled and galloped through shows she followed me, all the while as I tried to bow into our relationship I was falling out of myself, the music and alcohol had quit working. It felt like I was decaying in slow motion, parts of me lopping off and making metaphorical thuds onto the floor of my life. We married five years later, and she moved to Gainesville that fall, while I spun my way into the bottle. My life had become like a corkscrew. That autumn was a parody of my life up to that point, but instead of racing to records, I raced from woman to bottle to woman to bottle, each one I used as an oar to keep moving through the sea of my life but the sea too violent and the waves would cause the sutures I was providing myself to decompose after a night or two. The beast of depression was roaring within me and I thought I would die. I got sober shortly after moving to Gainesville and for a long time our love supported each other until, well, when it quit. Music had not worked for me in a long time, although being a father, meditation and writing helped, I was still pulling away. Never leaning in, only pulling away and invisibly apart-year by year, hiding although I had not realized it. The depression had resigned me to the far end of the bed, I had taken to sleeping in my son’s bed, listening to the soft hum of his breathing to feel alive. I moved out in October of 2018 and started another relationship. Always searching.

                Moving into a small two-bedroom apartment, located just blocks from the home we had created together I slowly started to breath again. The record and CD collection is always within reach, my television is intentionally upstairs in the bedroom, music fills my house all day long. The kitchen is small, my partner refers to it as a “one-butt” kitchen, with cramped quarters, jerry-rigged cabinets are shoved next to one another-the largest appears to have been found in an alley and  is shoehorned into a corner. I cracked my head against constantly my first year living here, at first a subtle reminder of my failed marriage until I finally learned to just make sure the cabinet doors are shut. The dining room is lined with a wall of records that face three tall shelves of compact discs that I won’t sell—I humorously refer to these as my walls of loneliness, of course it is only half a joking. Every weekend I take the stack of vinyl that sits next to my turntable and put them away, the stack is usually at least a foot or two high-they tell a tale of my mood during the week. And on Sunday I start a new stack.

                When “Bee Thousand” came out I was living in a tiny two bedroom house with a room-mate that worked at Kinkos and Stache’s, he was a great roommate who would help me out by printing flyers and xeroxed record sleeves for Anyway but also kept to himself so while we got along we both had our own lives that intersected but didn’t travel together. He would later marry a woman I had dated. I worked six days a week at Used Kids and the schedule in retrospect was a bit nuts but working there never felt like work, in fact it was where I usually wanted to be besides Larry’s, Stache’s or Bernie’s. Nevertheless, the weeks could grow long and the days at the store were made easier because we could drink there, chat with the regulars and listen to music all day long.–it was advantageous to someone who both enjoyed drinking and felt lonely a great deal of the time. I would cover myself in music, at home I would put on a record, crack open a beer and let the music smother me until the world outside disappeared and my insides would match the buzzing in my head. Bob Pollard, his brother Jim, and the rest of the band had been working with Mike “Amrep” Hummel on engineering and mixing their previous records Propeller” and “Vampire on Titus” over the past few years at the record store, and “Bee Thousand” was their first record with Matador which was akin to being asked to the prom by the prettiest girl in school. I was exceptionally happy for them.

                I’m more than half a century old, closer to death than birth where every year seems to flow by quicker, like the ending of the escalator getting eaten up by the floor—I am aware of my gliding towards annihilation. I have gone through much of life feeling a confidence that I would be ok, that with the help of music, books, and laughter everything was ok as it was. I never wanted for more, I have been content in many ways—not needing to feel the need to impress others. Although the search for companionship has always been there, a needing to feel loved does not always square with feeling unlovable, a cellophane wrap of self-doubt has covered me since an early age. It is like when someone purchases some new electronic equipment and there is a ribbon of plastic covering it but it never is removed. I was in my mid-twenties when it came out, had been through two difficult relationships—where my heart had been squeezed to hard, like a sponge being wrung out and had left me even more apprehensive. My favorite lovers were records and live shows, they couldn’t really leave a larger hole in my life like lovers do and I knew what to expect when I held them tight in my mind. Love though, was fraught with doubt—the worst imposter syndrome a person could have, a pursuit and, ultimately a rejection of what I wanted the most. “Bee Thousand” was a celebration of what I held dear to myself, that is music that filled holes in my life made my friends that in turn, helped jell the community we were all in. Like a secret handshake, it united many of us but also helped us to just feel better. I listened to it as well as the next several Guided by Voices records incessantly, which may sound like a lot but I listened to music continuously during that period of my life. I didn’t own a television for several years and never have never had cable television as an adult, my chosen salves have been records and books. Near the end of the 90’s when disappointment rose, the death of Jim Shepard and others were stacked next to the failures of many of the bands I worked with, a failed marriage, the splintering of who I thought I was—all trying to be sewn together with alcohol, records quit working. There was only so much room I had in my life, alcohol, and my hopes for having a “real” relationship was nudging the rest of the world out. I felt the pain of disappointment when I listened to different records, “Bee Thousand” being one of them—not anything to do with the music but, perhaps for the promise I felt during my early twenties, it was all smoldering by the end of the decade.

photo by Jay Brown

                Recovery lit something up in me, the first few months were terrifying—the shedding of the skin of alcohol that I had worn for all of my adult life was fast but left me exposed not only to the world but to my own inside world. Thoughts were frightening, like apparitions that floated from my brain down in the heart they towered inside of me, a metaphysical happening that exacerbated the anxiety I was feeling but it also provided an opportunity to remake myself to what I had once been, or maybe could have been. A rose color itself. Gainesville, Florida is always growing and decaying—every inch of earth sprouts life and while some of the life blooms almost daily some of it is gobbled up by larger and stronger beings that prey upon what ever lays in their path. A walk through the swampy area reveals large spiderwebs that stretch from tree to tree, flashing miniature rainbow diamonds constructed by the sun—it was both invigorating and challenging. I was running a lot then, this was a continuation of the long distance running I had taken up in the late nineties and early two thousands, a way of telling myself my world wasn’t splintering—a marathon runner can’t be an alcoholic. I would get up early, after Merijn left for work, log into the computer—drinking coffee and walk the dogs up through our neighborhood and out to Lake Alice, it was dangerous to let them all the leash as there were alligators on the golf course we lived across and they were dug in deep in the waters of Lake Alice. One beast devouring another, so we would walk, the two animals soaking in the sunshine while I soaked in the music on my Walkman. It was one of the only peaceful moments I may experience that day. Then I would log into my eBay account and sell records or the clothing I would find in the yard sales and thrift stores that dotted Alachua County. Central Florida is thumb-printed in poverty, a large county with the University in the middle, middle-class neighborhoods extended outward from the campus of Florida until the outskirts of town where a large state prison sits and just beyond for miles are ram-shackle houses, home-grown vegetable stands and mobile homes line the state routes. Many of which have every-lasting yard sales that line the road, tables of junk, old clothing and battered furniture pulled from the houses and garages and set on the side of the roads. One would wonder who would actually stop. I found it depressing. I would then attend a noon 12-Step group which would get me through to five or six o’clock where I when I would make dinner and then attend another 12-Step group to help quiet my brain. I listened a lot, and slowly felt comfortable enough to share what I was feeling and found my voice. Back home my records sat in a little office, my turntable had lost its needle, so I played CD’s and felt the pull of Ohio as I progressed through early sobriety. It was a year of growing out but also growing small. The biggest growing pains happen inside, and sometimes they happen long after our limbs have stretched out into the world, our ankles defying gravity as they move slo-mo towards adolescent. We can’t wait to grow older, grow out of our stumbling awkward selves even well into our lives, I found out that looking ahead or glancing backwards impedes whatever I am supposed to feel now.

photo by Jay Brown

                “Bee Thousand” came on the heels of “Vampire on Titus” which, I think, was mostly out-takes from “Propeller” which may be my favorite one of theirs. It sounds like it was recorded in the coolest treehouse on the block, the one that you could slip into, sneaking cigarettes and swigs of beer while your mother called you in for dinner, all the while you pressed play on the boombox and let Kiss “Destroyer” play. I idolized the kid across the street from my father’s house when I was ten, he was in high school and must be sixty now but he blared Boston, Kiss and Cheap Trick out his front door, he showed me his record collection one day after I told him I got “Hotter than Hell” with my birthday I money, “This is the good stuff” waving the dust jacket of the first Boston record, he had a cigarette in his hand, the dark shag carpet in his house smelled like must and cat. The next record I bought was Boston’s “Don’t Look Back” just because of him. I not only wanted to be cool but I wanted to be wrapped up and hugged by the music I listened to—be taken away from what ever it was that was making me sad and alone. Even now, when listening I feel primitive—as if the cosmos gave us this trinket called music to pacify us and give language to the way we felt, the indescribable. “Bee Thousand” and the records preceding it and the couple that followed felt like the kind of embraces I had always been yearning for but not only that because of the nature of the songs and the joy in the music, it felt like a collective experience with whomever you listened to it with, or saw them with. Which for me was my closest friends, lovers and of course, myself. It was made more intense because it was something I not only close to but a part of, and as the decade bore down on me a few years later, the fear that was but a kernel in the first half of the nineties had now turned into a shifting monster that was chewing me from the insides, the music became too much for me. My friends were dying, and I was adrift, not even music could save me. I stored the records away, so many records that kept me dancing and screaming with glee throughout my twenties. Guided by Voices, Gaunt, the Grifters, Jon Spencer, Teenage Fanclub. I did not listen to them for years, instead of lifting me I felt the soft underbelly of hurt and I did not know why.  

Bela and Merijn 1997

                I climb the elliptical, with mask on and pump my legs to the music I blast through my headphones, the ones that have the plastic ear coverings taped on because I sweat so much when I work out and for an hour I try to block out the world. It’s not even the running that carries me away as I work the machine it is the music; it has always been the music. I tend to go back to what I always have listened to, Bruce Springsteen, Superchunk, Teenage Fanclub, Built to Spill, almost everything with guitars—somethings really do not change. What moves us moves us unless we block it out. Sometimes on the nights I sleep alone, the dog stands next to me and nudges the blankets with her nose and I let her crawl under and she curls next to my chest, sighs a giant breath and falls asleep. When I moved out a few years ago to live alone for the first time in my adult life an empty bed to face me and my decisions-my mistakes every night there was a fear the crept in but also a bit of courage that I would be ok. For many years the solace I would search for came in the form of hard vinyl cylinders, where the crackle of the needle would spin me into feeling something differently or better articulate whatever emotion I was feeling, putting a spotlight and elevating it into something more magical than my brain could sort out. I also found solace in the women I was with, but in the end the hurt of loving someone usually made me push away, sadly I didn’t know any other way. Recently I went on a walk with my ex-wife, we laughed and watched my dog (that used to be our dog) scamper through the woods near my house. We talked about our current relationships, with no hint of jealousy and I told her I feel happy. That I reach for my partner’s hand unconsciously, that we laugh more than I ever have with anybody—and that I am trying to lean into my own fears and into love. “I’m glad you like to hold hands now” she said, as I used to pull away from her, unconsciously—maybe when the unconscious becomes conscious that is where change can start to really happen.

                I listened to “Bee Thousand” on repeat a few weeks ago, it sounded great and it felt better. There was no nostalgia or the tender pain of the disappointment I felt towards the end of my twenties, of that heady time in my life when there seemed to be an endless supply of drinks, laughter and bodies to clutch. There were many expectations I had for my friends, not so much for me, I wanted to be the fuel that helped get them to where I thought they should be but we all exploded in our own ways on our own gasoline that burned some of us down earlier than we should and scorched the rest of us. The hope that I once had changed, morphed into something else even though I didn’t have any idea that is what was happening. “Smothered in Hugs.” Make sure I close the cabinet doors.

Pearl

• Bela Koe-Krompecher
• Christmas
• death
• Jerry Wick and Jenny Mae
• Jon Solomon Christmas Story WPRB
• Mom
• Music
• Poverty and the Mentally Ill
• Sasha the Mouse
• THE CHAIR

Death, Walks, Lou Reed and Skateboards.

As I get older death arrives like a postman, dropping off letters in the box and with the uneasy anticipation of opening a bill, “what’s next?” that slowly turns into a quiet acceptance that people die. Things change. Contrasted with a summer that started in March but has felt like a cold winter as the summer tumbles into autumn, and then a new year—this summer may not end for some time. Bruno explores every day in his own twelve-year old self, still a child but taking chances—staying out later, riding his skateboard and his imagination down High Street onto campus, into the ravines that carve up our neighborhood and poking holes in his father’s ego, as he should. He has only got the whiff of death through my stories and my job where dying is as much a part of the work I do as scheduling a lunch meeting, the poor tend to die quicker and more painfully than the wealthy, it starts to clutch at their bodies almost from birth, living in rented apartments that are lacquered in lead paint, insects and noise. These are men and women where desperation is the norm and a reprieve may come from the joys of unpacking groceries and sharing a soft drink on the stoop, or better yet, a communal beer. Something I have learned in my chosen profession as a social worker and that is it is very difficult to die with dignity if one was never provided that dignity throughout their life.

This week was the third anniversary of Jenny Mae’s death, she who was strapped to a hospital bed by the invisible cords of addiction that had ravaged her body until, finally, it whispered “enough.” We had known she was dying as did she, but those of us in the know knew this, felt this for years—from the waiting deep into the night in my late teens for her to come home, wondering if she was in the arms of another man or worse, only to hear her come home, cackling through the front door. Her legs stumbling, catching herself on the doorframe, bellowing “I’m home, you should have been there.” But knowing full well she hadn’t wanted me there, where ever there was. That was the first warnings, an impending doom that lasted nearly thirty years. When I visited her the night before she died with Saskia who was all of eleven, barely into her double digits, Jenny glanced at us and we held her hand. She was tired. I had to tell her who we were, we were with her and she squeezed my fingers. There was no turning back but we left thinking she would hang on, the night nurse had said she was in good spirits earlier in the day, making weak jokes with her cracked voice, a husky shell of what it used to be. Her voice sounded like cracked pavement that had been smoking five packs of Camel cigarettes. “She should be off a ventilator tomorrow.” The nurse, sadly,  was right. If I had known she was to die, I would have slipped a coin under her tongue and told her I loved her in a braver,  less self-conscious manner than I had when Saskia and I slipped away.

The month started with the death of beloved client, a man who had traveled from South Africa to remake himself as a young man in his early twenties. He discovered art in his forties and made wood-burned etchings in his 12X12 room unknown to everybody until one day a few years ago one of my colleagues told me she was worried about him and asked me to check on him. He opened the door in a foul drunken mood and after some coaxing let me into his room where I discovered a world he created alone, full of his memories of Africa in the form of lions, masks and huts, all burned into small planks of wood—many he had constructed out of gluing together tongue dispensers. A few days before he died, another staff member and I stopped at his room and he complained of a pain in his stomach and allowed us to call an ambulance. The day before he died, I met with him in the ICU and he was very matter-of-fact as was his nature, “Bela, all of at the Y are all I got. Can you please make sure my mum gets my remains?” “Of course, but I think you are going to pull out of this” I replied. “That’s nice of you to think that,” he smiled in a way a mother smiles at her child who is planning on a visit from Santa Claus. He wrestled with depression and alcohol but in the last few years he had opened up, tried in spurts to quit his drinking and sought help for his depression, he would tell us at times, that this was the best his life had been in years, that he was happy. Last year he traveled back to Capetown and visited with his elderly mother and sister after being away for nearly 30 years.

 

A few weeks ago Ron Heathman, former guitar player for the Supersuckers died. The Supersuckers played Columbus a lot in the 90’s, and I booked most of their shows at Stache’s and one at the Alrosa Villa with the Hellacopters and New Bomb Turks. The shows were always a spectacle, they had a strong connection with Columbus, partly due to their friendship with the Turks and partly due to the fact that we all liked to drink a lot. Ron was always quiet, a bit in the background but in 2002, when I was roughly thirty days sober and living in Gainesville my wife and I went to Jacksonville to meet up with them. Ron, myself, and a few others of their touring party went to a 12-Step meeting, we talked about the struggle of alcoholism and addiction and he asked me what I got out of attending meetings—a sense of calm in the midst of the daily torment I felt. We didn’t really keep in touch, an email once or twice but that was it. I was relieved to find out later that he had found a home roasting coffee and becoming a barista, a perfect profession for someone who has discovered sobriety, I thought to myself.  His death hit me hard. I felt scared and sad for Ron, his daughter and for everybody who knew him. We all change but sometimes we don’t always believe it.

Last week when I discovered Justin Townes Earle had died, I thought of two things, the first of a dear friend of mine who had toured with him while she was trying to wrest herself from her own issues with alcohol, she had thought it was a good fit because he was supposed to be sober. She called me after the first night and confessed that she was struggling, “nobody is sober here, I feel alone.” Sobriety feels alone, especially at the beginning—we are faced with the fact we have no assistance from the bottle or the syringe and we lose our social group—our community, our people. It is a scary feeling, as every other thought is screaming to return to our village, to our use and our body is craving relief. My second thought was one of empathy, being sober and suffering from depression is a combo platter of fear and dread at times, sometimes it feels like a race to the end of life without taking a drink or walking into the ocean. It can be a daily feeling for some, usually fleeting like a bird passing overhead but at other times it can settle in as if were the stench of burnt wood, an old friend who is no longer a friend that won’t get the point and leave your house. A slow existential tug towards darkness.

This morning I listened to Van Morrison and Lou Reed, not their records from the 70’s the ones shot through with grime and yearning—the ones that so many of us have relied on, but the ones from the 80’s—the records that sometimes get maligned for being too straight, to compliant, smooth and void of danger. My first exposure to Lou Reed was “New Sensations” the third in his trilogy of sobriety and marital bliss after “The Blue Mask” and the rolling comfort of “Legendary Hearts”, although one could argue that “Waves of Fear” on “The Blue Mask”, with its squalling Robert Quine guitar-which sounds like an animal being choked to death, is one of the most brutal songs Lou ever performed, the rest is reflective and calm. After uncovering Lou’s other records that summer of my fifteenth year, most notably “Street Hassle” and “Live: Take No Prisoners”, “New Sensations” may seem quaint but to my rural Ohio ears, I had heard nothing that sounded so adult, so New York and so descriptive. It was dangerous to my young years. When I was discovering my own love affair with beer and whiskey in the late eighties and into the early nineties, some of these records were the solace I relied on. I would put on Van Morrison’s “Avalon Sunset” or “No Guru No Method No Teacher” in the mornings at the record store while I sipped a black coffee from Buckeye Donuts to nudge my hangover out the door, there was a solace in these records, especially in the morning when the fogginess of the previous evening had continued far into the early afternoon. A sense of serenity fills these records in their search for normalcy, it was a search that I was always on, not in a manner of fitting in with “normal” society but wanting to feel normal.

 

A settled calm was present in the record store when I would open it on Saturday mornings, the clanging of the door, the metal cage over the door window jangling against my weight, spilling my coffee because I didn’t want to set it on the pee-covered steps, the stairwell was a common pitstop for the drunken college kids staggering their way home, “hold up! I gotta piss real quick.” I’d punch the code to turn off the alarm, put on one of these records, or maybe Townes Van Zandt, Gene Clark or Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” all sounding like they were made for headaches and the early morning pangs of lonely. The nights before were filled with eardrums pushing forward towards the stages that we felt drawn to, eyes wide open not just to the musicians, usually all friends but also to the women who in the spotty darkness of Stache’s and Bernie’s looked like images of Patti Smith spitting black ink, they would make my heart curl up in desire while I let the music travel through my body as if I were the mine and the music was the dynamite blasting welcoming holes in my soul.  Like anything that is done repeatedly, it would take me years to figure out and undo what I had so eagerly taught myself, I did a swan dive into drinking in my late teens and didn’t feel the need to swim to shore until my early thirties, and nearly drowned in the process. It takes years to learn a bad habit and even longer to unlearn it. Some of us have figured it out but the darkness that looms underneath is always there, like an underwater river that slithers underneath all the cracks that we carefully walk across.

Recently I have discovered the joy of holding hands, of leaning into love and into what is uncomfortable, even going for a walk—something I never felt the need to do—I would rather run or lay in bed, no middle ground. That was how I lived, but the middle is just find, or maybe just off the middle a bit. Just enough. I take the hand of my daughter, or my partner, or Bruno sometimes one of them on each side as we walk the dog, watch her marvel at yet another joyful run at the park and everything is ok for the moment.